BSA Bulletin for March 2016
2nd March 2016
BSA Event Videos
Our website is now capable of hosting video recordings of BSA events. Members can currently watch the inauguration of Chris Grace and Dame Janet Suzman as honorary fellows of the association, complete with their reflections on their work with Shakespeare. A taster of the recording is available to all on the website, and members in good standing for the current year have been emailed a password for the full recording.
Teaching Shakespeare issue 9 now published
Issue 9 of the BSA magazine Teaching Shakespeare has just been published. This issue includes a bumper noticeboard and royally ushers in the year with two articles on the Henry IV plays by Michael J. Collins and Howard Gold. Submissions for Issue 10 can be sent to the journal editor at sarah.olive@york.ac.uk . Issue 9 can be downloaded from the BSA website.
Teaching Shakespeare: Call for contributions on Vietnamese Shakespeare
Dr Sarah Olive, chair of the BSA Education Committee and editor ofTeaching Shakespeare, is seeking contributions focusing on Shakespeare in Vietnamese education. Anyone with experience of learning or teaching Shakespeare in Vietnam can email sarah.olive@york.ac.uk to be part of this British Academy-funded project. For more information, see the full call on our website.
BSA Journal Volume 11 now published
Volume 11 of the BSA journal Shakespeare is now out, including special issues on ‘Adaptation and Early Modern Culture: Shakespeare and Beyond’, and ‘“Roaring Girls: The Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2014 Season’ as well as two open issues with a wide range of articles, critical debates and performance reviews.
New articles published online this month include Elizabeth Harper’s article on killing children in Shakespeare’s early histories, James O’Rourke’s essay on ethnic stereotypes in productions by Trevor Nunn and Dave Chappelle, and several new book and theatre reviews. Current members can subscribe to the journal – including the physical volume and full online access – at the heavily discounted price of £15. Contact Peter.Kirwan@nottingham.ac.uk for details and missing volumes.
Preparing for Hull 2016
The BSA’s 2016 conference, ‘Shakespearean Transformations: Death, Life, and Afterlives’, takes place 8-11 September 2016 at the University of Hull. The conference team has received abstracts from all around the world and is currently in the process of confirming the programme and contacting participants. Hull has recently been named one of the ‘Top Ten Cities in the World to visit in 2016’ by Rough Guides. Please visit the conference website for full details.
Disability and Shakespearean Theatre Symposium
The BSA is supporting this conference, taking place at the University of Glasgow on 20 April 2016. Professor Chris Mounsey will deliver a keynote on ‘VariAbility in Shakespeare’, and the symposium will be followed by the premier of Molly Ziegler’s new play Let Her Come In, a one-act rewriting ofHamlet focused on mental illness, gender and disability. Attendance is FREE to BSA members in good standing. For more information, please visit the conference website.
Applying for funding
The BSA is able to award small amounts of money to Shakespeare-related education events, academic conferences and other activities taking place in the UK. For more information or to apply for funding, please email the Chair of the Events Committee, Susan Anderson (S.Anderson@leedstrinity.ac.uk) or the Chair of the Education Committee, Sarah Olive (sarah.olive@york.ac.uk).
Bardolph’s Box: An Introduction to Shakespeare
The BSA is pleased to be supporting Up the Road Theatre’s Bardolph’s Box, a theatre production designed by BSA member Nicola Pollard for children aged 8-12 and their families. This 40-minute piece, featuring a number of lesser-known plays and characters, will be touring schools and libraries in the Liverpool and Kent areas in March. For more information, please see the company website.
THE BSA MEMBERS’ BULLETIN
We are pleased to advertise news and activities by our members and other Shakespeare associations. If you would like to advertise a Shakespeare-related activity, please email Peter.Kirwan@nottingham.ac.uk. Items below are not affiliated with or endorsed by the BSA – please use individual contact details for more information.
Death on the Shakespearean Stage: Call for Papers
Globe Education is marking the 400th anniversary of the deaths of Shakespeare, Francis Beaumont, Philip Henslowe and Miguel de Cervantes with an international conference running 1-3 December 2016 that explores death, rituals of dying and the experience of loss on the early modern stage. Please submit proposals of 150 words to farah.k@shakespearesglobe.com by 1 March 2016.
Follow the Ardingley Shakespeare conference on Twitter
Ardingly College is holding its annual Shakespeare conference on 7 March. As well as featuring presentations by teachers and students from sixteen schools, this year’s conference will feature plenary talks by scholars Tiffany Stern, David Schalkwyk and Russ McDonald, and actor Pippa Nixon. The conference will be broadcast at @ardinglyenglish #ardinglyshakespeare . For more information, please email Markus.Klinge@ardingly.com .
Margaret of Anjou: a ‘new’ play by Shakespeare
To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March 2016, Royal Holloway stages ‘the premiere of Shakespeare’s most feminist play’ at its Egham campus. Elizabeth Schafer and Philippa Kelly have pirated Margaret of Anjoufrom Shakespeare’s Henry VI and Richard III, tracing Margaret as she matures from feisty princess to scheming queen, cold-blooded killer to grief-stricken mother, shameless adulteress to cursing crone. The event is free, but please register here.
The Woman Hater (Edward’s Boys) on tour in March
The acclaimed children’s company Edward’s Boys (of King Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon) tours a new production of Francis Beaumont’s The Woman Hater to Stratford, Oxford and London from 9-12 March. For tickets and more information about the company, please visit its website at http://www.edwardsboys.org/ .
Sidelights on Shakespeare
The University of Warwick ‘Sidelights on Shakespeare’ series continues on 10 March 2016 with a talk by Dr Velda Elliott entitled ‘Detecting the Dane: Shoehorning Shakespeare into Genre Studies in A Level Literature’. This talk may particularly appeal to members working with A-level students. More details of the talk can be found here.
Shakespeare 400 Events at King’s College London
Shakespeare 400 events at King’s College London in March include the Beaumont 400 conference (March 12th) and a lecture entitled In Nature’s History More Science: Forbidden Planet (March 16th). For full information about the Shakespeare 400 festival and more upcoming events, please visit the website.
Propose a Research-in-Action Workshop at Shakespeare’s Globe
Shakespeare’s Globe invites scholars to apply to run practice-led research workshops in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in Spring and Summer 2016. This is an opportunity to test an idea related to the drama of Shakespeare or his contemporaries in performance indoors. Full information is available on the Globe website, and proposals should be emailed to will.t@shakespearesglobe.com by Monday 14 March.
The Bard in Bury
The Theatre Royal Bury St. Edmunds is hosting its very own Shakespeare festival for schools. Students aged 8-16 are invited to be part of a special production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in front of a paying audience. For further details on how your school can take part, contact georgina@theatreroyal.org or call 01284 829935. Schools will need to sign up by the end of March in order to participate.
Shakespeare’s Musical Brain, 16 April 2016, King’s College London
The Musical Brain is convening a special conference to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. ‘Shakespeare’s Musical Brain’ will include talks from academics, composers and neurologists, examining the relationship between words and music in aesthetic and scientific terms, and how it affects the relationship between actor and audience then as now. A limited number of student tickets are available at £35; full price £95. See the website for full details.
Call for Papers: Shakespeare in Latin America
The Institute of Literature at Universidad de los Andes (Santiago, Chile) is organising an international conference that will bring together scholars around the topic of the presence of his works within the Latin American canon, either in the existing tradition of translating his plays and poems by writers, poets, and academics, or in the re-writing and adaptation for performance. Abstracts are due 22 April 2016. For more information, please visit the conference website.
Bard by the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Morecambe
From 22-24 April, Morecambe will be hosting a major Shakespeare festival. Events include five adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, Shakespeare Comedy Dinner Theatre, a midnight screening of Theatre of Blood, workshops on acting and stage fighting, wine tastings, music from the Haffner Orchestra celebrating orchestral Shakespeare, a night of The Bard on Broadway, a puppet version of Forbidden Planet and even a historical and artisan market. For more details, please visit the website.
The Merchant of Venice in Venice, 27-28 July
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is organising a fundraising event in Venice to support its re-presentation of New Place. You are invited to attend a production of The Merchant of Venice in the Jewish ghetto (500 years old this year). Tickets (priced at £450) also include talks from Shakespeare experts and theatre practitioners, a three-course lunch at Locanda Cipriani, coffee and a drinks reception. For more information, or to reserve a place, please contact clare.sawdon@shakespeare.org.uk
Shakespeare Documented online exhibition launched
Shakespeare Documented is a multi-institutional collaboration convened by the Folger Shakespeare Library to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. This free online exhibition constitutes the largest and most authoritative collection of primary-source materials documenting the life of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). It brings together images and descriptions of all known manuscript and print references to Shakespeare, his works, and additional references to his family, in his lifetime and shortly thereafter.
BBC Shakespeare Archive now available to UK schools
The BBC has recently launched the BBC Shakespeare Archive Resource. This new online resource provides schools, colleges and universities across the UK with access to hundreds of BBC television and radio broadcasts of Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets and documentaries about Shakespeare. The material includes the first British televised adaptations of Othello and Henry V, classic interviews with key Shakespearean actors including John Gielgud, Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier, and more than 1000 photographs of Shakespeare productions.
New Book by BSA Member
Why Shakespeare? Who is this Hamlet? Is Lady Macbeth really evil? Can Caliban really be a twitchy speeded Goth freak? These and many more questions are addressed by BSA member Ruby Jand in her book Shakespeare Calling, a personal journey of exploration into the plays of Shakespeare and the search for an explanation of what a 450 year-old playwright from Stratford-upon-Avon means to us today.
RSC Resources for Schools
The Royal Shakespeare Company has released a new set of school resources to accompany its current UK tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Play for the Nation, which features local amateur companies taking the roles of the Mechanicals. Resources and information about events can be downloaded from the RSC website.
Shakespeare:Birmingham
Shakespeare:Birmingham organises weekly gatherings / Shakespeare play readings at the Birmingham & Midland Institute in the centre of Birmingham (Tuesdays, 6.30-9.00pm) and monthly workshops aimed at increasing enjoyment of Shakespeare through any means possible! In March we will be starting our reading of King Lear, all are welcome to attend. For details of meetings, please visit the website at http://shakespearebirmingham.co.