Theatre & Performance Studies News
In Memoriam - Professor Jim Davis
It is with a very heavy heart that we write to let you know that Professor Jim Davis passed away on Saturday 4th November following a stroke. Everyone who had the pleasure of encountering Jim will appreciate that this is a huge loss for his family, friends, colleagues, collaborators and the wider research community. He was a fantastic scholar and unwavering champion for the discipline and theatre historiography. He was such an important part of the Theatre and Performance family at the University of Warwick and will be missed for his leadership, mentorship, friendship and unfailing sense of fun and mischief.
Jim Davis joined Warwick in 2004 as Head of Department (2004-2009) after eighteen years teaching Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where he was latterly Head of the School of Theatre, Film and Dance. In Australia he was also President of the Australasian Drama Studies Association and member of the Board of Studies of the National Institute of Dramatic Art. Prior to leaving for Australia he spent ten years teaching in London at what is now Roehampton University. He co-organised many conferences including for the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) in New South Wales and at Warwick. He convened Historiography Working Groups for both IFTR and for TaPRA. He served as an editor for the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film.
He published widely and with considerable critical acclaim in the area of nineteenth-century British theatre. His most recent bookComic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England (2015) won the TaPRA David Bradby Prize for Research in International Theatre and Performance in 2017 and was shortlisted for the 2015 TLA George Freedley Memorial Award. His other publications include Theatre & Entertainment (2016), Dickensian Dramas: Plays from Charles Dickens Volume II (2017) and European Theatre Performance Practice Vol 3 1750-1900 (editor, 2014). He was also joint author of a study of London theatre audiences in the nineteenth century Reflecting the Audience: London 1840-1880 (2001), which was awarded the 2001 Theatre Book Prize. He contributed numerous chapters including essays on nineteenth-century acting to the Cambridge History of British Theatre and on audiences to the Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre. He also published many articles in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Theatre Notebook, Essays in Theatre, Themes in Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, Nineteenth Century Theatre, Theatre Research International and The Dickensian. He was also responsible for many of the theatrical entries in The Oxford Readers' Companion to Dickens and contributed to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Theatre and Performance, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Stage Actors and Acting and the New Dictionary of National Biography. For several years he wrote an annual review of publications on nineteenth-century English Drama and Theatre for The Year's Work in English Studies.
An event to celebrate Jim’s life and work was held on 6 January 2024 12pm-4pm in the Studios in the Faculty of Arts Building on the University of Warwick's campus.
Scene Painters who became Artists, Artists who became Scene Designers: Artists and the Theatre in Nineteenth Century Britain
On behalf of our Friends Association, please find below details of their first fundraising event of 2022.
We are delighted that Professor Jim Davis, Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick, has kindly agreed to give a talk (via Zoom)
'Scene Painters who became Artists, Artists who became Scene Designers: Artists and the Theatre in Nineteenth Century Britain'
Tuesday 26th April 2022
6.00pm BST. Finish approx 7.15pm including time for questions & discussion
Open to EVERYONE
Register for FREE Ticket and make DONATIONS via Eventbrite here:
A surprising number of nineteenth-century British artists (and at least one architect) commenced their careers as scene painters, while later in the century some established artists were persuaded to design theatre scenery. Some artists, such as W P Frith, enjoyed extensive social networks that included members of the theatrical profession. This talk will consider, among others, Clarkson Stanfield, David Roberts, John Wilson, Augustus Pugin, Thomas Sidney Cooper, William Leighton Leitch, Charles Marshall and Edward Burne-Jones. Given the number of scenic artists who fashioned the way the nineteenth-century spectator looked at the world, not only through the theatre but also in so-called ‘higher’ art forms, one might ask to what extent both the natural world and the reality of the day-to-day environment were represented through an inexorably theatrical lens.
Jim Davis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick. He holds a BA in English from Oxford University and a PhD in Drama from the University of Exeter, where he wrote a dissertation on the comic actor John Liston under the supervision of Peter Thomson. From 1976-86 he taught Drama at Roehampton Institute of Higher Education (now Roehampton University), and from 1986-2003 he taught at the University of New South Wales, Australia, where has was also Head of Department for eight years. In 2004 he was appointed Professor and Head of Theatre Studies at Warwick University. His most recent books are Comic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England Cambridge University Press, 2015) – winner of the David Bradby Prize for International Theatre Research, Theatre & Entertainment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Dickens Dramatized Volume II (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is also joint-author of Reflecting the Audience: London Theatre-going 1840–1880 (2001) – winner of the UK’s Theatre Book Prize - and has edited Victorian Pantomime: A Collection of Critical Essays (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010). He has published many book chapters and articles on nineteenth-century theatre. Currently, he is leading a three-year research project, funded by a large AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) grant on Theatre and Visual Culture in the nineteenth-century with colleagues from the University of Exeter. He is an editor of the refereed journal Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film. A Bristolian by birth, his interest in theatre was stimulated by regular visits to Bristol Old Vic productions during the 1960s, when he was a pupil at Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital School.
This FREE event is organised by the Friends of the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, a registered charity. But DONATIONS very welcome - see option when you register. Thank you!
If you have any questions about this event, please contact: ttheatrecollection-friends@bristol.ac.uk