My second book was published earlier this week. It’s called What Would Garrick Do? Or, Acting Lessons from the Eighteenth Century. The long title is deliberate: it has excellent search-engine optimization and recalls the titles of many of the three-hundred-year-old books I drew on to write it. When speaking about the publication, though, I tend to just call it What Would Garrick Do? and in my notes I simply write ‘WWGD?’
The idea for the book is also encapsulated in its title. I wanted to get people who are interested in theatre today to think about how a knowledge of past practice and ideas might change their current ways of doing things. In other – rather tongue-in-cheek – words, I wanted theatre teachers, directors, actors and others to ask themselves ‘what would Garrick do?’
The book draws on my knowledge of the eighteenth-century stage to tell its readers both what Garrick and his contemporaries would do day after day to produce their shows and what kind of things these people mused about when they wondered how Garrick and others would, say, express an emotion, read Shakespeare, alter his appearance, change his voice, and so on.
It is a book, then, about historical practice and historical theory because I believe both are interconnected. That belief ran through my first book too, but this new publication adds a third strand: the idea that these historical things can be newly appreciated and valued in a contemporary practical context.
I did not write this book alone. It began with a series of workshops at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, which led to a book proposal. The proposal was succssful, and my work then developed through a set of collaborations. Three partners local to me (Act2Cam, DJW Talent, and The Actors Forge) and The University of Bristol all let me set up series of events. Some events involved me presenting material and leading a workshop; others had me as an observer; and some had me simply sending over lesson plans and receiving reports.
At the end of that process I had the raw materials for a book: 14 exercises inspired by historical practice and though; and a lot of notes. The notes became 8 essays which simultaneously introduce the stage of the eighteenth century and tell the story of how it inspired my collaborators and me. Each essay has a theme:
- Emotion
- Cultivation
- Character
- Voice
- Action
- Company
- Audience
- Reflection
Written in the wake of the pandemic (and a lot of time scripting video lectures and talks), these essays are some of the clearest pieces of writing I have every produced. I’m quite proud of them.
The work now is for me to promote this book, in the hope that it will introduce people with an interest in theatre to one of (in my opinion) the most interesting periods of theatre history. Even better, I hope too that they will use what I did to give them new ideas about what they would do.
What Would Garrick Do? can be purchased directly from Bloomsbury with a 20% discount by using the code GLR AT5 at checkout.