Author Calthrop Dion Clayton

Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, Maurice Maeterlinck, and new translations of Euripides. These plays were produced successfully in repertory. In the period 1904-07, Barker also produced, directed, and acted in ten of Shaw's plays at the Royal Court, establishing Shaw's reputation as one of the foremost playwrights of the time. In some cases, the great success of the productions was due in part to Barker's acting performances (for example, as Cusins in Major Barbara and Tanner in Man and Superman). During his years at the Court, Granville Barker met and married his first wife, actress Lillah McCarthy. Over the following decade, the two of them would produce and act in a number of plays around London. In 1910, he coached her while she played Jocasta in Max Reinhardt's production of Oedipus at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. His productions of Shakespeare's plays at the Savoy Theatre in 1912 and 1914 were highly influential. In 1912 he directed The Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night; in 1914 he directed A Midsummer Night's Dream. Granville Barker did away with "star" system of acting and instead concentrated on excellence in the entire ensemble. He directed actors to speak Shakespeare's text rapidly, and used mainly curtains to create scenery, thus cutting down on the length of performance. He steered clear of elaborate, historically-"accurate" scenery and opted instead for symbolic patterns and shapes on stage. He extended the stage of the Savoy over the footlights and onto the first few rows of the stalls; thus his actors could play on an open stage, and connect more closely with the audience. In all of these innovations, Barker sought to capture the "spirit" of Shakespeare's plays. As a playwright, Granville Barker experimented with form, and proved an extremely gifted writer of dialogue and architect of ideas. His best known plays are The Voysey Inheritance (1905) (later adapted by David Mamet), Waste (1907, not licensed until 1920[1]) and The Madras House (1909). All of his plays, except Vote by Ballot (1914) and Farewell to the Theatre (1916), have been produced at the Shaw Festival in Canada[2]. His plays have also been featured by director Sam Walters at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames. Late in his career, after marrying for the second time, Barker broke with many of his old theatre friends, including Shaw, and settled in Paris. He then added the more aristocratic hyphen between his middle name and surname while publishing volumes of criticism, his Prefaces to Shakespeare, and translations of Spanish plays. He was Director of the British Institute in Paris between 1937 and 1939[3]. He died in Paris in 1946.