Födelsedag: 1962
Kön: male
Nationalitet: UK
Yrken: theatre critic
Kort biografi: Robert Butler writes about culture and climate change and how ideas of place are reimagined in the 21st century.

His most recent play "A Drop of Fred" (2022) starred Elliott Hanna (Billy from "Billy Elliott"). He is currently writing a play about a supply chain crisis.

His writing on theatre includes five publications about the process of staging productions at the National Theatre (2000-2006). He edited the Methuen Student Edition of Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" (2003). His interviews with Philip Pullman, Rowan Williams and Nicholas Hytner appear in "Darkness Illuminated" (2004, ed. Lyn Haill).

His writing on culture and climate change includes co-editing three publications in the Culture and Climate series "Recordings" (2011), "Narratives" (2014) and "Scenarios" (2019).

He was drama critic of the Independent on Sunday (1995-2000) and online editor, feature writer and "Going Green" columnist for The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine (2007-2014).

From 2015-2019 he was a postgraduate researcher in the Geography department of The Open University.

Twitter: @robert__butler

Medlemmar

Recensioner

The Art of Darkness: Staging the Philip Pullman… av Robert Butler

While I was reading Nicholas Wright's script for the His Dark Materials stageplay, LibraryThing's recommendation engine informed me of the existence of this, a making-of book for it. As the script itself hadn't given much of an answer to how things like dæmons would work on stage, I turned to here. It sort of answered my questions, but it devoted most of its time to the cast, writer, director, and rehearsals. There are a lot of pictures, but most were headshots of actors in rehearsal; I'd liked to have seen how this actually looked on stage. Of course, that's probably because the book was evidently rushed out to be available for purchase at the earliest performances; the ending is underwhelming as it cuts off about two weeks before the play opens to the general public. Despite these shortcomings, it's a good read, showing you how "the two Nicks" (Nicholas Wright, playwright, and Nicholas Hynter, director) worked to overcome the Herculean challenges of bringing something as huge as His Dark Materials to stage. While it serves to explain away some of the oddities of the script, it made me more disappointed in it: Wright and Hynter complain that the structure of the novels is unsuited for the stage, as it takes over half of the first novel to get to the point where the adventure begins, which should happen a half-hour in at most. This is why the adaptation has to rocket through scenes so quickly, to get to this point with all due speed. But if this was to be a genuine stageplay, why not make it into one? Why did the script have to be so restricted by the structure of the books? The biggest thing Butler's book did was left me wishing that the brains behind this stage version had been more daring, not less.

All that said, now I really wish I'd seen it on stage. I want to see that drum revolve in action!… (mer)

Flaggad

Stevil2001 | Oct 23, 2009 |