Joint Independent Scholars Association of Australia (NSW Chapter) & Royal Australian Historical Society
Open Forum
Date: Tuesday September 25, 2018; Time: 2pm - 4pm
History House. Royal Australian Historical Society
133 Macquarie Street, Sydney
Title: Charles Dickens and his performed readings: a new art form:
In his third professional career after journalism and fiction, Dickens as a performing reader brought his novels alive on the platform to enthralled crowds in over 400 public presentations. He was unique among contemporary novelists in developing a career as a reader of his own work, in terms of histrionic brilliance. This presentation will explore why the readings were the great theatrical sensation of the day. With particular focus on A Christmas Carol, we will look at how these highly dramatic readings were conducted, received, staged and scripted in what Dickens called ‘this new expression of the meaning of my books’. While they were enormously popular they may also have been the death of him, so why did he choose to go on tour and why did he continue?
Image caption: Charles Dickens photograph by Herbert Watkins 19th Century, Museum no. PH. 87-82
Isabel Deeble is an ISAA member with a most interesting and diverse background.
She designs and delivers corporate learning and development in presentation skills, negotiation, influence, behavioural styles, interpersonal communication and high level workplace communication. She has conducted programs in China, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand and throughout Australia.
Away from clients, her interest is in the physical and social environments of literary luminaries, the sense of place and time which influenced and informed their writing.
She has spent many days walking the literary trails of Charles Dickens and others in the UK and in the east coast of the USA where during the last two years she visited more than twenty writers’ museums.
Isabel’s background in the Performing Arts and in developing curriculum in Theatre and Drama for Queensland Education, lies behind her focus on the public readings of Charles Dickens, and what was seen as the new performance art form that he created in these readings. Dickens is arguably the first international celebrity, attracting fame particularly though his reading tours in the later part of his life.