Overview

The plays of María Martínez Sierra were popular in Spain, South America and in translation on Broadway and London's West End in the first half of the 20th century but they were thought to be written by her husband, the celebrated director and playwright Gregorio Martínez Sierra. After his death, the authorship of his work was revealed to be that of María, making her one of the most important playwrights of her time. This edited collection features three plays by María Martínez Sierra, translated by Helen and Harley Granville-Barker, along with an introduction by Patricia O’Connor, University of Cincinnati, US, which examines María's extraordinary life and work, and the battle for her authorship to be recognized in both the Spanish-speaking and anglophone world. This volume focuses on plays centred on strong women; and each is translated by the eminent man of theatre Harley Granville-Barker and his wife, Helen, whose own story holds stark parallels to Maria's in terms of authorship. The collection is edited by playwright Richard Nelson and Professor Colin Chambers, who contribute an essay on the translation work of the Granville-Barkers. The plays are: The Kingdom of God (1928); The Romantic Young Lady (1920) and Take Two From One (1931). María Martínez Sierra: A Great Playwright Hidden in Plain Sight recognizes María de la O Lejárraga García, to use her birth name, as one of the most important female playwrights, not just in Spain, but globally, in the first half of the 20th century.

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9781350300187

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Colin Chambers is Emeritus Professor of Drama at Kingston University. Colin was Literary Manager of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1981 to 1997, and has also been a journalist and theatre critic. He is co-author with Richard Nelson of Kenneth’s First Play and Tynan (both Royal Shakespeare Company), and he selected and edited for performance Three Farces by John Maddison Morton, which were produced at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. As well as editing the Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, Colin has written extensively on the theatre including Other Spaces: New Writing and the RSC, Playwrights’ Progress (with Michael Prior), The Story of Unity Theatre, Peggy: The Life of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent (winner of the inaugural Theatre Book Prize), Inside the Royal Shakespeare Company, Here We Stand: Politics, Performers and Performance – Paul Robeson, Isadora Duncan and Charlie Chaplin and Black and Asian Theatre in Britain: A History. Harley Granville Barker (1877-1946) was the most brilliant British director of the first quarter of the twentieth century. His best known plays, including Waste (banned by the Lord Chamberlain), were written as contributions to his Company's repertoire of provocative modern drama for a subsidised national theatre, a cause he championed in his book A National Theatre: Scheme and Estimates. Waste was first presented by the Stage Society in 1907, before being revised and produced at the Westminster Theatre in 1936. Other plays include The Madras House, first produced at Duke of York's Theatre, 1910; The Secret Life; and His Majesty, which received its first production at the Edinburgh International Festival by Orange Tree Theatre Company in 1992.

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