Bernard Shaw's play about poverty, wealth, and warfare, is also unusually preoccupied with theater. This presentation looks at Major Barbara in the context of metatheater - "the theater examining itself."

1. Barbara Undershaft’s
Profession
Jean Reynolds
Polk State College

2. How will future audiences relate
to Bernard Shaw?

3. “A Doll’s House will be as flat as ditchwater
when a Midsummer Night’s Dream will still be as
fresh as paint; but it will have done more work
in the world, and that is enough for the highest
genius, which is always intensely utilitarian.”
- Bernard Shaw

4. Working…or “fresh as paint”?

5. TimeTravel
• 1961
• 1941
• 1956
• 2013

6. 1961

7. “Sometimes I do not see what the play was
driving at until quite a long time after I have
finished it; and even then I may be wrong about
it just as any critical third party may.”
GBS, Postscript to Back to Methuselah

8. Past versus Present

9. Was Barbara constrained…
…by her social
position and era?

10. 1941
CUSINS.What on earth is the true
faith of an armorer?
UNDERSHAFT.To give arms to all
men who offer an honest price for
them, without respect of persons or
principles... to all sorts and
conditions, all nationalities, all
faiths, all follies, all causes and all
crimes.

11. 1956
UNDERSHAFT. I'm sorry I was called
away. [Indicating the telegrams]Good
news from Manchuria.
STEPHEN.Another Japanese victory?
UNDERSHAFT.Oh, I don't know.Which
side wins does not concern us here. No:
the good news is that the aerial
battleship is a tremendous success.At
the first trial it has wiped out a fort with
three hundred soldiers in it.

12. 2013

15. GuthrieTheater, Minnesota
AbbeyTheatre, Dublin
Martin BeckTheater, NewYork
American ConservatoryTheater, California
Christopher Newport University,Virginia
PallasTheatre Cooperative, Sydney
PearTheatre, California
Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake
ShakespeareTheatre Company,Washington D.C.
StorchTheatre, Syracuse
OlivierTheatre, London
Berkshire HallTheatre, Connecticut
HilberyTheatre, Detroit
Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Chicago
Louise O. GerritsTheater, Miami

16. Today’s audiences still enjoy Major
Barbara.

18. A saver of souls…and an actor

19. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women
merely players….”

23. Mrs Warren’s Profession Barbara Undershaft’s
Profession

24. The White Lead Factory Lady Britomart

25. “…a very typical managing matron of the upper class…
…limited in the oddest
way with domestic and
class limitations,
conceiving the universe
exactly as if it were a large
house inWilton
Crescent….”

26. Barbara’s Future

27. “Onward, Christian Soldiers!”

28. Barbara grew up in the Established
Church.

29. The Salvation Army…
…was the first
Christian
denomination to allow
women to preach and
hold leadership
positions.

30. It provided Barbara with a platform
and an opportunity.

31. Role-playing is a pathway to “metaphysical
self-realization.”
– Bernard Shaw, 1889

32. All the world’s a stage….

33. LADY BRITOMART. “I asked
Charles Lomax and Adolphus
to dinner on purpose that they
might be here. Andrew had
better see them in case he
should cherish any delusions
as to their being capable of
supporting their wives.”

34. PRICE. Respectable married
woman, gittin rescued by
the Salvation Army by
pretendin to be a bad un!
RUMMY. What am I to do? I
can't starve.Them Salvation
lasses is dear good girls; but
the better you are, the
worse they likes to
think you were before they
rescued you.

36. Comedies of Manners
Morrison Charles Lomax

37. BARBARA. “I want a
house in the village to live
in with Dolly.” [Dragging
at the skirt] “Come and
tell me which one to
take.”

38. Looking at Barbara through the lens
of role-playing

39. UNDERSHAFT.Tell him, my love, what power
really means.
BARBARA [hypnotized] Before I joined the
SalvationArmy, I was in my own power; and the
consequence was that I never knew what to do
with myself. When I joined it, I had not time
enough for all the things I had to do.

41. Will Barbara turn into her mother after
all?

44. The father archetype…
…constellates the
child archetype.

45. BARBARA. Let God's work be done for its own
sake: the work he had to create us to do
because it cannot he done except by living men
and women.When I die, let him be in my debt,
not I in his; and let me forgive him as becomes a
woman of my rank.

46. Barbara Undershaft grows up

47. Barbara Undershaft’s
Profession
A Hidden Play
by Bernard Shaw