ASTR citation

In 2012, I was honoured to receive the American Society of Theater Research’s Distinguished Scholar Award. In his remarks, Prof. Thomas Postlewait perfectly articulated what I have sought to do in integrating the study of early film and nineteenth century theatre.

“With the greatest of pleasure, the committee members for the ASTR Distinguished Scholar Award announce this year's winner. Our honouree, whose scholarship has often focused on British popular entertainment, especially pantomime and melodrama, has published books with various presses, including Harvard University Press, Methuen, University of Manchester Press, Oxford University Press, Samuel French & the Theatre Museum, Phaidon Press, and University of Iowa Press.

This scholar has published dozens of articles, and is a regular contributor of essays to book collections, including The Cambridge History of British Theatre, The Carnbridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre, The Cambridge Companion to the Actress, The Edwardian Theatre, The Victorian Theatre and Visual Arts, and Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre. In tum, this scholar has served as editor of one of our theatre joumals, and has also edited microfilm and microfiche editions of Nineteenth Century Theatre Periodicals for Harvester Press and the George Sims Collection of Playscripts for Emmett Publishing.

Our distinguished scholar has won several grants and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, three research grants from the British Academy, two fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, a Paul Mellon Fellowship at the Center for British Art at Yale University, and a John M. Ward Research Fellowship at Harvard University. He has also been the dramaturg for productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company and several other companies, and he has been a consultant on musical scores for productions of Victorian plays at several theatres, including the Gate Theatre in Dublin and the National Theatre in London. Moreover, this scholar has served for six years as a consultant for “The American Memory” programme at the Library of Congress, as curator for an exhibit on nineteenth-century theatre photography at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, as a member of the Advisory Council for the Theatre Museum of the Victorian and Albert Museum, as a trustee for the Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection, and as consultant to the BBC and the Arts Council of Great Britain for television shows on pantomime.

Without question, this scholar, along with Brooks McNamara, has been one of the pioneers in the study of popular performance. Like Brooks, whom ASTR honoured in 1997, the scholar we honour today has been a leader in the study of the paratheatrical attributes of performance. Decade by decade, these two scholars enlarged and transformed the study of popular entertainment. Even when hiking together in the Rockies, these two friends continued to share ideas and anecdotes about popular performers and performances.

And yet all of these amazing accomplishments now seem to be a scholarly prelude to perhaps the most innovative contribution this scholar has made during his distinguished career. In addition to his continuing study of British popular theatre, he has carried forward a campaign to demonstrate how and why the history of early film should not—and cannot—be understood properly apart from the history of nineteenth century theatre. With complete dedication, he has become the reigning authority on the intricate web of relationships that united theatre history and film history. Indeed, he has almost single-handedly has brought together the two disparate communities of theatre historians and film scholars of early cinema. During the last two decades he has published a series of articles on aspects of theatre and film that undermine the standard narrative of “stage to screen” that two generations of film scholars have maintained. In 1994, he delivered a major part of his case when he published Playing Out the Empire: Ben-Hur and Other Toga Plays and Films, 1883-1908. Then, in 2009, he culminated his campaign with the publication of Stagestruck Filmmaker: D. W. Griffith and the American Theatre. This book is the definitive study, proving that the heritage for early film resides fully in the history of popular theatre.

What a marvellous career, what a marvellous person. David Mayer, born and educated in the United States with degrees from Yale and Northwestern, taught at several colleges in the U.S. and Great Britain before joining the faculty at the University of Manchester in 1972. He has been an emeritus professor for fifteen years, the years in which he has maintained and even expanded his scholarship. It is true that he now occasionally takes some time off to scuba dive in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, but he and his wife Helen Day-Mayer continue to serve as co-directors of the Victorian and Edwardian Stage on Film Project. And they continue to deliver papers at the film and theatre conferences in Europe and the United States.

So today we have a very special occasion: we get to honour a scholar who joined ASTR in its earliest days and has been a member for five decades. Accordingly, the three members of this year’s committee—Bruce McConachie, Janelle Reinelt and Tom Postlewait—invite you to join us in celebrating the amazing and very special career of David Mayer.

(We note that not even a hurricane could keep David and Helen from flying from Manchester to Nashville!)”