Technical Properties

Abstract

This paper takes up the question of “things” in contemporary English theatre by examining a trivial, even “banal” prop which appears in any number of plays: the stage telephone. After outlining the highly conventionalised function of the stage telephone as a pretext for exposition and a guarantee of the integrity of off-stage space, the paper examines a number of departures from the convention, including Tom Stoppard’s post-modern citation of the stage telephone in The Real Inspector Hound and Caryl Churchill’s exploitation of its sonic and visual properties in Serious Money. The paper concludes with a consideration of Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, a play without telephones, but one which nonetheless reflects profoundly on what is at stake in the humble s tage telephone, that is, the status of telecommunications in the theatre.