Dobrée, Bonamy
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1891-1974) UK academic and author, in active service during World War One. He is of sf interest for Timotheus: The Future of the Theatre (1925 chap), a contribution to its publisher's To-day and To-morrow series shaped as an excerpt from a Future History told presumably to Dobrée by its unnamed narrator, who had duplicated H G Wells's Time Machine to travel to 2100 CE, and has now returned. The Theatre of this implicitly Dystopian era has become a Psychological weapon in line with the Behaviourism promulgated by John B Watson: theatrical arenas are designed as engines to shape audience responses around emotions that those in authority wish to inculcate, the actual plays themselves serving as semantically empty vehicles. The most recent development is the Hurry Theatre helmet, which fits over the head of an isolated viewer, allowing intense transmission of the required emotion. Some remaining playwrights are restive, but actors in general seem jubilant. [JC]
Bonamy Dobrée
born London: 2 February 1891
died Blackheath [ie London]: 3 September 1974
works (highly selected)
- Timotheus: The Future of the Theatre (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Company, 1925) [chap: in the publisher's To-Day and To-Morrow series: hb/nonpictorial]
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