20th Anniversary of The International Shaw Society
2024; Penn State University Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5325/shaw.44.1.0135
ISSN1529-1480
Autores Tópico(s)Literature Analysis and Criticism
ResumoThe International Shaw Society, Inc. (the ISS) was legally established as a not-for-profit organization in the United States in 2004, inviting would-be members to join the ISS in its effort to globalize Shaw Studies. Its first Conference gathering occurred in Sarasota, Florida at a Branch Campus of the University of South Florida, in March of 2004. This was later followed by the first ISS Symposium in July of 2004 at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, where Shaw's plays were produced. And so, the United States and Canada shared the birth of the ISS.This summarizing essay is to acknowledge and celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the ISS and all those who wished and worked for it, hoping that the best acquired wisdom of George Bernard Shaw would spread wider and deeper in our international culture. The ISS gave Shaw Studies more of an international reach and perspective. The acronym "ISS" emphasizes Bernard Shaw's continuing presence as a talkative spirit with very relevant things to say, often of the hyperbolic, satiric, paradoxical, and ironic sort. "Smiling comedy," he called it, to which many responded, although not always in the way he wanted.So, what does one do to celebrate an anniversary of twenty years? In our case, I think looking back over the past to consider, evaluate, and appreciate what was built in those twenty years is the thing to remember and keep learning from, the building blocks being memberships and the attendance of members at conferences, symposia, and other appropriate gatherings, thus adding our social presence to what was published in Bernard Shaw's writings, sayings, arguments, and promotions of revolutionary ideas and attitudes.An example. Note that each volume of SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, published by the Penn State University Press, with Christopher Wixson as current general editor (after taking over from Michel Pharand), ends with a section on the "International Shaw Society," which is focused on "Benefits of Membership." Among the benefits are the opportunities young scholars are given to qualify for financial support to attend conferences and symposia, thus contributing to the development of their scholarship and understanding of the times. As the years passed, the ISS focus on getting young scholars, financially bolstered, to attend the conferences and symposia became closer to our main agenda, and in this post-pandemic time maybe should come first.That's where we are now, but what came before that, and what steps were taken to bring it into being? To be more explicit, what motivated Leonard Conolly and Richard Farr Dietrich, the co-conspirators in this plot, to consider creating the International Shaw Society? The answer is probably if partially in the history of previous Shaw Societies and Shaw Studies, in what Shavians of all varieties had accomplished and hadn't accomplished. What was left to do?To begin at the beginning, the first Shaw Society was in the UK, of course, centered in London, while Shaw was still alive (1941), and the SSUK attempted to make itself "international" with some degree of success. They self-published The Shavian for many years, still a wonderful journal to read, nicely accompanying the more academic journals of other Shaw Societies elsewhere. As Canada has joined the ISS in the attempt to internationalize, so, too, we've coupled with The Shaw Society UK as well, not in competition but as broadeners of the cause and in how to use it. In that cause, of course, we increasingly have technology on our side. What we have today and didn't have in "olden days" is email, mobile phones, and the internet. And airplanes. Now we're minutes or hours away instead of days and months, living on a planet that facilitates internationalism. Come visit, we're just next door.Thus, inevitably, there were persistent attempts to create a Shaw Society of America, in whole or in scattered bits and pieces, at least making known that there were many who wanted such an identity. For a few decades, Shaw Societies sprouted up here and there in America, a good example being The Bernard Shaw Society, a breakoff from the SSUK, that focused on New York (Rhoda Nathan being the last president), which published The Independent Shavian (1961–2010). And there were other parochial attempts to operate some sort of Shaw Society in the USA in places like Chicago and California.A major attempt to centralize such a Shaw Society in America gradually developed in the hands of Dan H. Laurence in Texas (eventually, although before that he taught at Hofstra and NYU in New York) and Stanley Weintraub in Pennsylvania, with both focused on publication, of Shaw or on Shaw, though these two men largely went different ways to achieve that. It began in 1950 with the "pamphlet" published by the Penn State University Press. According to Dan Laurence (as Leonard Conolly sums up what he had learned from Dan), it all began with the founding of "The Shaw Society of America" in 1950, first with its Bulletin (1951), then The Shaw Bulletin (1952), then The Shaw Review (1959). In the 1960s The Shaw Review was published by both The Shaw Society of America, Inc., and The Penn State University State Press. But from 1966 on The Shaw Society of America is not listed as a joint publisher of those publications. All journals (edited by Stan Weintraub, up to a point) from then on were published by the Penn State University Press alone, which eventually continued with a series of general editors who replaced Stan.But what happened to the Shaw Society of America? Alas, Stan and Dan are not here to tell the story fully and correctly. Apparently, the partial answer is that the Shaw Society of America never conducted conferences or symposia or any other sort of large meetings, and there's no mention in those days of a Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. In short, in "The Shaw Society of America," there was little to no "society." Personal connections were seemingly few and far between. I delighted in receiving letters (later called "snail-mail") from Dan but letters from him were substitutes for a typewriter. As someone who published many textbooks, scholarly articles, and books with a typewriter, I was even more delighted by the coming of the computer, as was Stan and many other younger Shavians at the end of the twentieth century.At any rate, as the Shavians in control emphasized publication over socializing even more, The Shaw Review became, in 1981, the much larger SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, which, when it started publishing biannually in two volumes (2015), seems to have slightly changed its title again to SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, all the changes instituted, it seems, by officially editor-in-chief Stan Weintraub. Michel Pharand was coeditor or general editor from 2006 to 2016, and now Christopher Wixson is general editor. Whatever name the journal was given, it was almost all about publication, not the social gathering that so powerfully contributed to the cause.So, putting "society" before publication, Leonard and I looked elsewhere for inspiration in creating the ISS. We didn't want to denigrate publication but call for it in a different way. What inspired us to take that turn? I think we would both point to three random conferences, with independent leadership, that came before the ISS was created and were thus very helpful in motivating us to create the ISS and educating us in how to do it. There were other "antecedents," but the three just below were our strongest "antecedents" in starting us in a different direction.The First Antecedent to the ISS took place in Canada. Leonard Conolly reports that "The first international Shaw Conference, Bernard Shaw on Stage, sponsored by the University of Guelph and The Shaw Festival, both in Canada, occurred on 23–26 August in 1989. Participants came from Canada, the United States, the Soviet Union, South Africa, France, Kuwait, Japan, Sweden, and England. In addition to the academic part of the conference, participants saw Festival productions of Man and Superman, Getting Married, and Shakes versus Shav and participated in discussions and workshops with Festival company members. Guelph University mounted exhibits from its Shaw Festival archives and the Dan H. Laurence Shaw Collection. Papers from the Conference were published in 1991 by the University of Guelph as Bernard Shaw On Stage: Papers from the 1989 International Shaw Conference, edited by L.W. Conolly and Ellen Pearson.The Second Antecedent to the ISS was hosted by Bernie Dukore, who reports that "the 1992 Shaw Conference, Bernard Shaw and the Last Hundred Years, sponsored by Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (popularly known as Virginia Tech)—with support by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, and Virginia Tech—was held in Blacksburg, Virginia from 4 to 7 November 1992, the hundredth anniversary of Shaw's first play, Widowers' Houses, which is often judged to be the first modern drama in the English language. Participants were from the United States, England, Canada, and the Republic of Ireland. Eminent speakers, in addition to those from academe, included Martin Esslin, Peter Barnes, and Dan H. Laurence. Attendees saw productions by the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre (Farfetched Fables, directed by Montgomery Davis) and by Virginia Tech (The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet and Man of Destiny, directed by David Johnson), each followed the next day by a symposium discussion of the production. Papers from the Conference and edited transcripts of the symposia were published in 1994 in SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies (1992): Shaw and the Last Hundred Years, edited by Bernard F. Dukore.The Third Antecedent to the ISS was a Conference in 2001 at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This conference featured a rare production of Back to Methuselah produced and directed by Monty Davis. See Margot Peters's wonderful Tribute to Montgomery Davis in SHAW 29, 217–25. Also notable at this conference was the first serious discussion of creating something like the ISS, which Leonard and I took seriously enough to call for further meetings of interested Shaw scholars. With the crucial aid of Dr. Denis Johnston, who at the Shaw Festival was in charge of publications and academic liaison for artistic director Christopher Newton, such meetings took place in the summers of 2002 and 2003 at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. At the 2003 meeting, those present voted to officially establish the International Shaw Society, which I, voted in as acting president, proceeded to make legal with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the State of Florida as a 501(C3) not-for-profit corporation, which meant not having to pay taxes if income stayed within $25,000 or less. That has really paid off! Leonard in 2010 became the second president after my six years in that role.These three antecedents really gave us a boost by giving us confidence that there would be enough membership possibilities to conduct annual meetings with a dues-paying membership. This was a big step up. Thanks to all who made it possible.One more thing. By putting the emphasis on attending conferences and symposia, we were also making more possible the visiting of theaters in which Shaw's plays were produced. What a difference that made, in all of the ten conferences discussed below and the twenty symposia that, alas, we didn't have much room for discussion of in this article. There is no better way to get into Shaw's thinking than by experiencing his plays.That history established, I think it would now best serve our walk back into the past by naming the conferences we visited and remembering the learning and social enjoyment we got from them. These conferences were all supported and funded by the ISS, in cooperation with whatever academic institutions that were involved. Contemplate the list of conferences below, think of conferences you attended and how each contributed in a unique way to the growth of the ISS, promising more to follow.Although a huge archive on almost every conference held so far could be produced, what follows is, alas, mostly a bare-bones account of each conference. Sorry for that, but I hope these small samples will bring many fond memories of meeting fellow Shavians, hearing their presentations, and seeing Shaw plays together. Here's the first call:Conference # 1: the original and, to me, most memorable ISS Conference, "G.B.S. by the Bay," occurred in March of 2004 with the very generous support of the University of South Florida in general and of its branch campus in Sarasota, Florida, in particular (fig. 1). Fortunately, at this time my wife Lori Dietrich worked for the president of USF and introduced me to the dean of the Sarasota Campus, Laurie Stryker, and its Provost Peter French, who cofinanced the conference in conjunction with New College and others. It was like rocketing into space, to evoke another Florida phenomenon. Without Laurie Stryker and Peter French, there might never have been an ISS, no rocketing into space, so to speak.But why start in Sarasota, Florida, of all places? Well, that's where the inspiration and determination to create the ISS mainly resided, with conference-sized buildings to match. As a professor, I taught in the English Department at the main campus of USF in north Tampa, but occasionally I taught courses at the Sarasota branch south of St. Petersburg as well, which gave me lots of time to look Sarasota over. What I saw was a small, attractive city that amazed me with the number and quality of its cultural institutions. The Sarasota area with its cultural and intellectual wealth struck me as perfect for our first conference. This was the fuel for our rocket, so to speak.In fact, this conference took place in mostly rather exotic buildings, such as in the Ringling Museum (in maps identified as Ca' d'Zan, House of John), in some of whose rooms on the Bay where a major part of the conference took place. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca%27_d%27Zan for the full history.The Asolo Theater across the street provided a Shaw play during the conference (The Millionairess being a very apt choice). In an adjacent theater we attended a talk by Eric Bentley (interviewed by Sally Peters, who years ago lived in Sarasota with her family). To add to this artful atmosphere, across the street from the Asolo Theater, was an art museum. Sarasota also had an opera house! It also had one of the few classical music radio stations. And a small airport that brought the celebrated Eric Bentley to us.Much of the housing around such places matched all that. This is probably why Tim Carroll, current Shaw Festival Artistic Director, and others of the Shaw Festival, hosted a reception several years in a row in Sarasota, as if the ISS was circling back to its origins, until the Pandemic forced a stop.To top things off, the UK, it seemed, had been especially invited to the Sarasota Conference to bless the ISS in its launching of a partner Shaw Society. Eric Bentley, now American, had been born and raised in England, and actor Barry Morse (the President of the Shaw Society UK) and his son Hayward Morse, both of the original Shaw Society, flew in from England to perform the play Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship written by ISS member Anthony Wynn. The play is based on the letters between G.B.S. and Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, the poet and intimate companion of Oscar Wilde. Imagine that.Lest we forget our imaginations, let's imagine that Shaw's spirit may have been stirred to another of his whirlpooling thoughts by this play in this location, with its whirlpools of water just offshore from the conference, invitingly. Or, more broadly, he may have been wandering about in such a city and wondering at what the wealth reveals, monetarily, culturally, and spiritually, and considering the irony of such a collision between a poor man's Shaw and a rich man's Shaw, both of which he had experienced, but ending with him as owner of "Shaw's Corner" and very pricey cars after emerging from poverty, partly at his wife's expense. With letter writing thrown into the Shaw-Oscar Wilde mix, his whirlpool of thought thus having ink pens, he must have wondered which way to go. Well, dinner was ready.The meetings and final dinner reception occurred in the exotic Ringling Mansion on Sarasota Bay, with the Gulf of Mexico just beyond Long Boat Key with its posh hotels, restaurants, and beaches. We apologized to attendees for not allowing enough "beach time" (joke). After all, Shaw was a very good swimmer (fig. 2) and would have insisted on that.ISS Conference #2, The Brown University Conference in June of 2006: "Sesquicentennial Shaw," kept us going, largely thanks to ISS VP Don Wilmeth. Brown University was founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Ninety-seven people registered for the Conference, the last name on the registration being Don Wilmeth, Asa Messer Emeritus Professor, who brilliantly "ran the show." Besides a keynote address by A. M. Gibbs, Australia, a special feature was a display of Sidney Albert's extensive Shaw collection, recently acquired by Brown University. I think at that time Sid was working on his book on Shaw's connection to classical Greek culture, published as Shaw, Plato, and Euripides, in The Florida Bernard Shaw Series, of which I was the series editor.Which reminds me that out of this, with some help later from Don Wilmeth, emerged The Palgrave "Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries" series, which has been in the hands of Series Editors Nelson Ritschel and Peter Gahan. They have already published a lot of books, mostly centered on Shaw.ISS Conference #3: Shaw Conference in October of 2009 at The Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. "Shaw and Politics" was an appropriate subject for a meeting in Washington, D.C., although the word "politics" was broadly applied. The conference began with a terrific reception at the Irish Embassy, followed by the keynote address at the university by the Shaw Festival Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, with papers and panels to follow. Ninety-five people registered (the ISS expanded rapidly in those days because of the conferences).This conference was set in motion by John MacDonald, the Artistic Director of the Washington Stage Guild (a theater still thriving and still doing one Shaw play a year), who was so proud of the Drama Department at the Catholic University of America that he insisted that our conference be held there. When, months later, the news came that John had died in an accident, we could not believe that this had happened just a few months before our conference was to begin, and I wish we had room for an excellent essay by Bernard F. Dukore praising John for his long appreciation of drama, theater, and Shaw plays in particular and deliverance of such in live productions. Dukore's Tribute to John MacDonald can be found on pages 225–30 of SHAW 29. In honor of John, I think, the university's drama Department produced Shaw's In Good King Charles's Golden Days, a rare treat.ISS Conference #4 was convened in 2011 at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. "Shaw Without Borders/Shaw sans Frontières" was overseen by ISS President Leonard Conolly and a local Guelph committee that included ISS stalwart Dorothy Hadfield and sponsored by the ISS in collaboration with the University of Guelph and the Shaw Festival. Featured speakers included Michael Billington, theater critic for The Guardian, on "Shaw in the English Theater;" Jackie Maxwell, Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival, on the current production of On The Rocks; Christopher Newton, Artistic Director Emeritus of the Shaw Festival, on "Shaw the Canadian" and on the current production of Heartbreak House; and Stanley Weintraub, Evan Pugh professor emeritus, Pennsylvania State University, on "Shaw and the Dictators." The conference included exhibits from the University of Guelph Library's Shaw Festival archives and the Dan H. Laurence Shaw Collection. It also coincided with the 50th anniversary season of the Shaw Festival and the launch of Leonard Conolly's book, The Shaw Festival: The First Fifty Years.ISS Conference #5, "G. B. Shaw: Back in Town." The aim of the 2012 conference at the University College of Dublin, Ireland, organized by Audrey McNamara, was partly to position Shaw into the Irish canon, particularly in the wake of Peter Gahan's inspirational 2010 Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition. This conference was not only focused on Shaw's return and relevance to today's Ireland but also with his stature in and influence on world drama. Of great help in that was a reception at the National Gallery of Ireland and an address by the president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, who had just come from a London speech in which he honored Shaw's ties to the London School of Economics. This was followed by a keynote speech by Nicholas Grene and a talk by another drama scholar Anthony Roche. Registrants participated in discussions and visited Dalkey Castle and Shaw's cottage on Killiney Hill, a highlight being an Open Theater production in the Gallery Garden of Shaw's O'Flaherty VC, starring Peter Gahan and Nelson O'Ceallaigh Ritschel, speaking in Irish brogue.ISS Conference #6, in June 2013, featured a special gathering at "Shaw's Corner" in Ayot St. Lawrence and a visit to London, cosponsored with the Shaw Society UK and largely overseen by Evelyn Ellis and House Steward Sue Morgan. Michael Friend produced Shaw's Geneva in Ayot, the doing so being a part of a long tradition of "picnic dramas," so to speak, outside on the lawn at "Shaw's Corner" or in a nearby Palladian Church. Michael Holroyd (now Sir Michael!) delivered an address at that church, which is sometimes used for other Shaw affairs. Between that church and Shaw's Corner, on behalf of the Conference, rose a huge tent in which to host a Conference, dining and wining and having a great time. In that tent there were lots of friendly and hardworking local people involved who are to be thanked. Our day in London was also bountiful, with a stop at the London School of Economics (which had Shavian support at its beginning) where there were talks that measured how Shaw had fared in changing the UK's politics. Not well, it seems, with the Tories in power. I would feel remiss if I ended this without mentioning the place we stayed in Ayot, "The Brocket Arms," with beds upstairs and downstairs, the pub of my dreams.ISS Conference #7, "Shaw in New York," October 16–19, 2015, sponsored by Fordham University at Lincoln Center with Master of Ceremonies Michael O'Hara, ISS President. Special welcoming from Martin Meisel of Columbia University and Keynote Address by David Staller, founding artistic director of The Gingold Theatrical Group, which presents Project Shaw and the New York Festival: "Shaw in New York." Following that was a discussion with Terry Teachout, drama critic of the Wall Street Journal. David Staller also produced The Doctor's Dilemma. Another featured speaker was Joseph Hassett, Washington lawyer and author of W. B. Yeats and The Muses, speaking on "How the struggle between Yeats and Shaw over Florence Farr engendered Shaw's virtual presence in New York." Another featured speaker was Stanley Weintraub, speaking on "Bernard Shaw's Other Playbook: The Playlets Outside the Plays," accompanied by The Shavian Players, Chris Roe director. Also featured was "Stanley Weintraub at Shaw's Corner: An Interactive On-Line Learning Resource," presented by Dr. Anne Wright, vice chair of the Shaw Society UK, and Professor Martin Wright, award winning interactive media producer—GamelabUK. And many more excellent talks and discussions on everything Shavian, as with all our conferences, usually overflowing with interesting ideas.ISS Conference #8: "Shaw at the Shaw," in which a Conference & Symposium were combined at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, July 21–25, 2018, sponsored by The Shaw Festival, the ISS, and York University. All meetings were at the Royal Cambridge Hall behind the Prince of Wales Hotel. The introduction to the conference was by Michael O'Hara, president of the ISS. The keynote was by Tim Carroll on "The Shaw Festival: Mandate versus Mission." Featured speaker Fintan O'Toole gave the "Ten Rules of Shavian Theatre." Another featured speaker, Thomas Postlewait, spoke on "The Partnerships between Shaw and William Archer." Thirty-eight additional papers were presented. A featured event, dedicated to the memory of Christopher Innes (who died in 2017), was "Joan of Arc in a 3-Way Mirror: Literature, Theater, Opera," with Brigitte Bogar singing and Ellen Dolgin reading. Shaw's Saint Joan and Androcles and the Lion were featured in the festival theaters, accompanied by a Q&A with the casts, as was often the case at the Shaw Festival, to everyone's delight.ISS Conference #9, at Universidad de Extremadura in Cáceres, Spain, "Shaw and Europe," was held at the Instituto de Lenguas Modernas in Cáceres on May 25–27, 2022. (Originally scheduled for 2020, the event had to be postponed due to the Pandemic). Plenary speakers included Brad Kent (Université Laval, Québec), who explored "Tides of Influence: Bernard Shaw and World Literature," and Audrey McNamara (University College Dublin), who spoke about "Bernard Shaw: Realism, Women and Ireland." Another featured speaker was Mª Isabel Romero (Universidad de Málaga, Spain), who dissected the conditions of sex workers in late Victorian England. This lecture was combined with a drama workshop via Zoom with director Anthony Banks and actors Caroline Quentin and Rose Quentin, who were working on a West-End production of Mrs. Warren's Profession. The academic program ended with Brian Freeland's one-man show, "Bernard Shaw: Playing the Clown," where the former lighting technician-turned-actor impersonated Shaw in a funny, moving monologue.ISS Conference #10: Conference at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, June 9–11 of 2023, the topic being "Shaw and Heroism." ISS President Bob Gaines graduated from this university and helped out in overseeing the conference. The rest is from Bob Gaines: "The Williamsburg Shaw Conference started off with a bang on Thursday evening, June 8th with a wine and hors d'oeuvres reception. Dr. Laurie Wolf of The Department of Theater and Dance served as our hostess for the conference and provided much food for thought with her exceptional programming, as well as literal food and spirits, which we enjoyed in community. Peter Gahan delivered the keynote address on Friday morning, brilliantly underscoring our conference theme Shaw and Heroism. There followed an assortment of papers, zoom presentations, plays, and tours that took us to our closing Sunday morning. Of special interest was a reading of Shaw's St. Joan by a cast of William and Mary Theater students. The reading took place in The Great Hall of the Wren Building, in the heart of the college. The next day we spoke with the students both about their performances and their experiences with Shaw. In no other conference have we had such direct access to students. David Staller, joining us by zoom, asked each of us to discuss our introduction to Shaw. In the swell of participate responses we learned why so many in our midst are so devoted to Shaw. The conference banquet Saturday night provided us a delightful time to both eat and socialize. Miki Matsumoto, a Japanese PhD student, was our travel grant winner and accepted her check at the close of the banquet. After Mary Christian's final paper on Sunday morning, the Shavians sat and exchanged further ideas for at least another hour, no one wanting to leave the comradery and exchange of ideas that so cocooned the entire experience.ISS Symposia: There were also twenty Symposia, mostly at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario, mostly in late July (originally to accommodate celebrating Shaw's birthday on July 26, 1856), sometimes combined with other doings. The only symposia that were not held in Niagara-on-the-Lake were in Chicago, cosponsored by the Shaw Chicago Theater Company, in 2010 and 2014. The 2014 symposium was cosponsored by the Illinois Humanities Council and the Literature and Language Department at Roosevelt University. It took place at the Chicago Cultural Center, with Artistic Director Robert Scogin and Managing Director Tony Courier presiding.The symposia had several Shaw scholars as overseers, beginning with Leonard Conolly to 2011, with Brad Kent taking over for several years. I think it was at one of the Chicago Symposia that Jennifer Buckley, from the University of Iowa, first appeared and became an ISS member. Soon after that, she became vice president of the ISS and current overseer of the ISS Symposia.Wish we could give more space to the first twenty years of the symposia and its connection to the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake because there is much to learn from the unusual combination of Shaw plays getting produced annually with academic attendance to bring criticism and historical relevance to the discussion of the plays, especially when actors joined in that. I think there's been more agreement than not between actors in Shaw plays and academics who published on them. In conclusion, what was accomplished by the founding of the International Shaw Society? The emphasis in this article has been on moving the focus in Shaw Studies from just publication to "socializing" but with a kind of socializing that was still enough focused on scholarship to produce publications galore, both of the article type as in SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, and of the book type, as illustrated by the "Florida Shaw Series," for which I was series editor, publishing nineteen books on Shaw, and the "Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries" series, for which Nelson Ritschel and Peter Gahan are series editors, publishing twenty books already with more coming, and the University of Toronto Press with its "Shaw Correspondence Series," initially edited by Percy Smith and subsequently by Leonard Conolly.Perhaps the word "melding" would be the best word to use to capture the thing we're driving at, and seeing productions of Shaw plays academics have published on is part of that melding. And thus, we keep Shaw alive in the world of literature, theater, criticism, and politics with the appreciation for and examination of his dramatized ideas. A lot of hard work by ISS officers and editors and publishers has kept us going in these Symposia.Well, come to think of it, the Shaw Chicago Theater Company showed us how to reward people for such extraordinary work by giving them a "Bernie." In 2018, ISS President Michael O'Hara representing the ISS got a Bernie, and I got a Bernie for my "dedicated leadership," etc. (fig. 3). See for yourself at 2018ISSNewsletter&Supplement.pdf (shawsociety.org). They can have their Oscars; we're happy with a Bernie that speaks for the ISS.
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