I've frequently written about the Scottish dramatist Joanna Baillie and her play The Family Legend, which was a sensation when it premiered in Edinburgh in 1815.
Now, a group of scholars is getting together to put on a virtual reading of the play in November. Today, we met for a workshop on Baillie, trying to iron out some of the details of the reading, which will be held over Zoom.
Baillie laid out some of her theories on drama in the preface to her first volume of the Plays on the Passions. In it, she postulated that the chief object of tragedy is "to delineate the progress of the higher passions in the human breast."
Two additional volumes of The Plays on the Passions followed. The third volume contains a lengthy complaint about the expansion of the theatres in Britain at the time, which enlarged houses to such an extent that subtle acting became nearly impossible.
"The diminutive appearance of individual figures, and the straggling poverty of grouping, which unavoidably takes place when a very wide and lofty stage is not filled by a great number of people, is very injurious to general effect," Baillie wrote. She feared that actors would soon "only attempt such strong expression as can be perceived and have effect at a distance."
Over Zoom, we'll have a chance to perhaps do some more subtle acting than was generally on display in the mammoth theatres of the 19th century. Tune in on Saturday, November 21st to see the end result. You might even see some familiar faces up on the screen...
