Journal ArticleDOI
9 August 1967/ the pyjamas
TLDR
The authors used news reports of witness evidence at the inquest of the deaths of Orton and Halliwell to examine the relationship between the early Orton industry and the concept of anniversary.Abstract:
Commemoration of the anniversary of the deaths of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell brings centre-stage an event which has caused difficulties for those writing about Orton. These difficulties mainly originate in John Lahr’s biography, which used the deaths as a frame for viewing Orton’s life and work. This essay attempts to think afresh about those deaths by drawing on texts that pre-date the biography, namely the news reports of witness evidence at the inquest. These texts have very different tone and detail from the biography but get lost under the memory- and archive-management which characterises the early Orton industry. In following where the news reports lead us, the essay takes the opportunity to ask questions about the concept of anniversary.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Introducing Orton: a history and a historiography
TL;DR: In his plays, Orton gleefully yanked the blinds on England's small-minded pieties and prurience, exposing hypocrisy and greed as discussed by the authors. And yet in a way it was the closet that got him: murdered in 1967 by h...
References
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Book
Memory, History, Forgetting
TL;DR: A landmark work, "Memory, History, Forgetting" as discussed by the authors examines the reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, revealing how this symbiosis influences both the perception of historical experience and the production of historical narrative.
Book
Prick up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton
TL;DR: Lahr as discussed by the authors reconstructs both the life and death of Joe Orton, an extraordinary and anarchic playwright whose plays scandalised and delighted the public, and whose indecisive loyalty to a friend caused his tragic and untimely death.
Journal ArticleDOI
Orton in the Archives
TL;DR: In this article, the legacy of the playwright Joe Orton is discussed, and how his infamous diary was shaped for the consumption of others first by Orton himself, and then by his agent Peggy Ramsay and biographer John Lahr.