- United Kingdom
Benjamin Poore
University of York, Theatre, Film and Television, Faculty Member
- Ben Poore is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre at the University of York’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television, and... moreBen Poore is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre at the University of York’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television, and Programme Leader for the BA in Theatre: Writing, Directing and Performance. Ben specialises in adaptation studies, histories of playwriting, and the uses of history in theatre. His current research investigates the use of extreme timescales and alternative timelines in modern drama.edit
This collection considers new phenomena emerging in a convergence environment from the perspective of adaptation studies. The contributions take the most prominent methods within the field to offer reconsiderations of theoretical concepts... more
This collection considers new phenomena emerging in a convergence environment from the perspective of adaptation studies. The contributions take the most prominent methods within the field to offer reconsiderations of theoretical concepts and practices in participatory culture, transmedia franchises, and new media adaptations. The authors discuss phenomena ranging from mash-ups of novels and YouTube cover songs to negotiations of authorial control and interpretative authority between media producers and fan communities to perspectives on the fictional and legal framework of brands and franchises. In this fashion, the collection expands the horizons of both adaptation and transmedia studies and provides reassessments of frequently discussed (BBC’s Sherlock or the LEGO franchise) and previously largely ignored phenomena (self-censorship in transnational franchises, mash-up novels, or YouTube cover videos).
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After only one eight-part season, the television series Penny Dreadful, a Showtime/Sky Atlantic co-production, had already become an international success with an active and vocal fanbase. Yet the relationship of the show (which was... more
After only one eight-part season, the television series Penny Dreadful, a Showtime/Sky Atlantic co-production, had already become an international success with an active and vocal fanbase. Yet the relationship of the show (which was created and written by John Logan) to the Victorian serial fiction genre, penny dreadfuls, is an oblique one, and worth unpicking. The first part of this article focuses on the task of teasing out the connections between Penny Dreadful and the penny dreadful genre, arguing that the show's title performs significant cultural work in positioning itself in relation to Victorian fiction and in relation to modern television. In the second part of the essay, I explore how Penny Dreadful works as an adaptation, using Kamilla Elliott's insights into the contradictory and overlapping concepts of adaptation in Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate. Finally, the essay considers Penny Dreadful as a reflection – and, it is argued, an appropriation – of contemporar...
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... The import of what is passing between the women is indicated by a very fast cutaway shot of them clasping hands, and the exchange: Rose: If you should need a friend [...] Nancy: You'll remember me well to him, yeah? (Giedroyc... more
... The import of what is passing between the women is indicated by a very fast cutaway shot of them clasping hands, and the exchange: Rose: If you should need a friend [...] Nancy: You'll remember me well to him, yeah? (Giedroyc 2007) ...
Research Interests: Comedy and Comedy Studies
This paper argues for a reassessment of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “This Other Eden” season, which presented a range of new work in London in early 2001. It places the season in its historical context, in a British political... more
This paper argues for a reassessment of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “This Other Eden” season, which presented a range of new work in London in early 2001. It places the season in its historical context, in a British political landscape dominated by New Labour and its optimism about remaking the nation, and also in a world that within six months was to experience the turmoil of the September 11th attacks. Using Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History as a starting point, this essay analyses the ‘time-hop’ dramaturgies of two of the season’s plays in particular, Moira Buffini’s Loveplay and Luminosity by Nick Stafford. The turn of the millennium marked the beginning of the end for Adrian Noble’s tenure as Artistic Director of the RSC, and this paper argues that the placeless quality of the “This Other Eden” season – neither wholly a product of Stratford nor London – was symptomatic of tensions at the time, both within this flagship national organisation and in the nation at large.
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This essay addresses the difficulties that modern t heatrical adaptors of Dickens' Oliver Twist (1837-8) have had in following Lionel Bart's music al Oliver! (1960). In particular, it compares the strategies employed by two recent... more
This essay addresses the difficulties that modern t heatrical adaptors of Dickens' Oliver Twist (1837-8) have had in following Lionel Bart's music al Oliver! (1960). In particular, it compares the strategies employed by two recent stag e productions which seek to re- contextualise the figures of Fagin, Sikes and Nancy : The Mystery of Charles Dickens by Peter Ackroyd, and
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Developing from Chap. 4’s examination of game-playing in Sherlock Holmes adaptations for the theatre, this chapter singles out a particular aspect of the Holmes stories: the moment when the detective deduces startlingly precise... more
Developing from Chap. 4’s examination of game-playing in Sherlock Holmes adaptations for the theatre, this chapter singles out a particular aspect of the Holmes stories: the moment when the detective deduces startlingly precise information about a visitor to Baker Street through close observation. Drawing on the theory of ‘dark play’ and suggestions of Holmes as a conjuror, the chapter argues that the observational technique known as ‘the trick’ represents Holmes at his most morally ambiguous. Changing social conventions have made ‘the trick’ an even more compelling and troubling piece of theatre in contemporary adaptations.
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This chapter makes the case for the longstanding connection between Sherlock Holmes and the theatre, and develops the concept of ‘live Sherlockiana’, whereby contemporary Sherlock Holmes plays affirm or transform elements of the... more
This chapter makes the case for the longstanding connection between Sherlock Holmes and the theatre, and develops the concept of ‘live Sherlockiana’, whereby contemporary Sherlock Holmes plays affirm or transform elements of the characters’ story-world and play with intertextuality. The chapter argues for the significance of the Victorian setting for Holmes adaptations on the stage, and the special appeal of 221B Baker Street. Research methods and terminology for the book are explained, and an outline of the rest of the volume is provided.
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Michael Punter has written a number of plays that engage with the supernatural, including Darker Shores, produced by Hampstead Theatre in 2009, and Stagefright, produced by the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds in 2012. His ghost play for... more
Michael Punter has written a number of plays that engage with the supernatural, including Darker Shores, produced by Hampstead Theatre in 2009, and Stagefright, produced by the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds in 2012. His ghost play for children, The Nightwatch, was produced by Pop-Up Theatre in 2002 and toured the UK thereafter. Michael is Director of Theatre Education for CAPA, The Global Education Network, based in London. His academic research has focused on the career of Henry Irving. At CAPA, his courses include Witchcraft and Magical Performance in London. In this interview with Benjamin Poore, Michael discusses his early influences, the relationship between theatre and ghosts, theatre for and about young people, and the challenges and paradoxes of staging the supernatural and the Gothic.
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The aim of this volume is to examine nascent movements, genre shifts, developing authors/playwrights and controversial themes as they emerged in both drama and theatre. The editors have focused on the essence of creative nexus of London... more
The aim of this volume is to examine nascent movements, genre shifts, developing authors/playwrights and controversial themes as they emerged in both drama and theatre. The editors have focused on the essence of creative nexus of London from the end of the ...
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Research Interests: History and Interventions
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The variety of ways in which games are played in Sherlockian theatre is the focus of this chapter. From filling in the blanks in the Holmes and Watson narratives, to setting the audiences challenges, dares and mysteries to solve,... more
The variety of ways in which games are played in Sherlockian theatre is the focus of this chapter. From filling in the blanks in the Holmes and Watson narratives, to setting the audiences challenges, dares and mysteries to solve, contemporary theatre featuring Sherlock Holmes, the chapter argues, involves its audiences in various forms of play. This preoccupation with play is fully present in the canonical stories, and is illuminated by an engagement with modern theories of play.
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In this chapter, the book presents a theory of Holmes adaptations that questions the borders between the canonical and the non-canonical. It suggests that Holmes adaptations operate on a network of previous adaptations, rather than having... more
In this chapter, the book presents a theory of Holmes adaptations that questions the borders between the canonical and the non-canonical. It suggests that Holmes adaptations operate on a network of previous adaptations, rather than having a bilateral relationship with the source text only. The ‘fidelity criticism’ of Sherlock Holmes fans who appraise adaptations, the chapter proposes, has been successfully inverted by the television series Sherlock, where fans are rewarded for their canonical knowledge.
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Sherlock Holmes is examined as a cultural phenomenon that has spawned a range of adaptations at one remove in this chapter. It considers the impact of Sherlock actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman’s high-profile stage roles, and... more
Sherlock Holmes is examined as a cultural phenomenon that has spawned a range of adaptations at one remove in this chapter. It considers the impact of Sherlock actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman’s high-profile stage roles, and compares stage and screen adaptations of Julian Barnes’ novel Arthur & George, in which Arthur Conan Doyle investigates a miscarriage of justice. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time as a form of contemporary Sherlockian theatre.
This chapter examines the acts of burial and exhumation in three contemporary British history plays. For the purposes of this argument, a ‘history play’ may be defined as a piece of writing for the theatre that engages with historical... more
This chapter examines the acts of burial and exhumation in three contemporary British history plays. For the purposes of this argument, a ‘history play’ may be defined as a piece of writing for the theatre that engages with historical events or settings. Such plays inevitably, at the moment of their staging or revival, take on particular meanings for audiences, since theatre as a live, durational art form encourages spectators to compare the historical events depicted with their present historical moment. The chapter argues that acts of burial and exhumation in contemporary British theatre are intimately tied to notions of land, soil and belonging. These became increasingly pertinent ideas in the UK’s political climate in the years following the 2016 Referendum on membership of the European Union. Of the three case studies, Victoria by David Greig (2000) dates from more than a decade before this vote, whilst Common by D. C. Moore (2017), and Eyam by Matt Hartley (2018) were written ...
This chapter uses the reception of the Sherlock episode ‘The Abominable Bride’ to begin an investigation into the complexities and pitfalls of representing Sherlock Holmes in contemporary entertainment. Variously regarded as the epitome... more
This chapter uses the reception of the Sherlock episode ‘The Abominable Bride’ to begin an investigation into the complexities and pitfalls of representing Sherlock Holmes in contemporary entertainment. Variously regarded as the epitome of white male privilege, or else a victim of addiction or psychological or neurological conditions, contemporary debates about the character inform audiences’ interpretation of Holmes on stage. The chapter traces a history of femmes fatales in Sherlockian theatre, and analyses modern productions that challenge this stereotype.
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This chapter takes the form of a survey of Sherlock Holmes criticism and analysis, focusing particularly on those works that attempt to explain the continuing appeal of the Victorian detective in the twenty-first century. It highlights... more
This chapter takes the form of a survey of Sherlock Holmes criticism and analysis, focusing particularly on those works that attempt to explain the continuing appeal of the Victorian detective in the twenty-first century. It highlights the way in which Holmes has come to signify an ideal worker, a dream of fulfilling labour, which is as pertinent today as it was in the late Victorian era. The chapter also considers Holmes as an anti-hero, and as a product of specific media contexts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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Neo-Victorian Villains offers a varied and stimulating range of essays on the afterlives of Victorian villains in popular culture, exploring their representation and adaptation in neo-Victorian drama and fiction.
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This essay sets out to explore how Anglophone theatre in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has tried to represent the spiritualist seance and how this often involves allusions to the performance conditions and contexts of... more
This essay sets out to explore how Anglophone theatre in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has tried to represent the spiritualist seance and how this often involves allusions to the performance conditions and contexts of spiritualism’s nineteenth-century heyday. In the last few years, the depiction of the seance has begun to move away from Gothic narratives of encounters with an unnameable evil, and back towards the seance’s show-business roots in commercial entertainment. Anglophone theatre has a legacy of seance plays to come to terms with whenever a medium is represented on stage, particularly in the form of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Blithe Spirit (1941). Therefore, the chapter argues, attempts by contemporary playwrights to write seance scenes and create spirit medium characters are haunted by the theatrical past, as much as by the past of their own narrative worlds.
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Draft poster for this 2013 symposium.
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This chapter argues that in neo-Victorianism-and in 21 st-century culture more widely-a narratological model of the villain as an archetype fulfilling a particular story-function, no longer suffices. Instead, villains often cross over... more
This chapter argues that in neo-Victorianism-and in 21 st-century culture more widely-a narratological model of the villain as an archetype fulfilling a particular story-function, no longer suffices. Instead, villains often cross over from their allotted narratives and acquire a different narrative function in someone else's story, refusing to 'stay put' or 'know their place' in time and space. The chapter proposes a model of villainy that is performative, and conveyed through distance, that is, an asymmetry of narrative detail when compared to the hero or anti-hero. Contemporary novelists, film-makers, comic book authors and illustrators, and television writers repeatedly evoke and reinvent the nineteenth-century villain. This reveals important connections between the Victorian age's serial fiction, adaptations and melodramas, and developments in the production and consumption of media today.