Bardolph’s Box – ‘It’s a really good story’

13th April 2016

This is a guest blog post from Nicola Pollard, a member of the touring Bardolph’s Box production, sponsored by the BSA (http://www.uptheroadtheatre.co.uk/bardolphs-box/).

As I write this, we’ve been on the road for four weeks, Liverpool, Wigan, St Helens, Sittingbourne, Ramsgate, Deal, Whitstable, Gravesend, Dover and Ashford. Currently we’re in Sandwich Library, on a break between shows. We’re also playing in museums, theatres, arts centres and schools, for pupils and families alike.

Anna Buckland as Launce. Photo by Brain Roberts.

Bardolph’s Box is an introduction to Shakespeare’s plays for 8 – 12 year olds. I wanted to create a piece that illustrated the fun and joy prevalent in the stories, to try to get our young audience on Shakespeare’s side before they study the plays at secondary school. A long-time fan of the Bard, I believe in the power of the language, the skill in his expression to capture a thought or a moment.

Our key aim was to engage our audiences, with the text and with the characters. Through watching the performances it seems we have done just that. Our script invites the children to join in – when Bardolph first discovers The Box and seeks suggestions for how to open it, or when Prince Hal needs encouragement to feel a bit more majestic. The majority of our audiences contribute with gusto, suggesting magic words to open The Box, or more practical offerings such as ‘Lift the lid’… There have also been unanticipated contributions. Such as the children in Wigan who bellowed at Bardolph that this new Dromio was not the same as the previous Dromio, or the child who told Cleopatra that Bardolph was not here, he had actually left the room and gone down the stairs.

As a small-scale piece it is intended for more intimate spaces, with an audience of one or two classes. Alice Smith’s wonderful design has proved its flexibility and adaptability time and again: a pop-up frame covered with a gorgeously decorated backdrop, behind which we have the many costumes, props and instruments. Altogether we have 19 characters – backstage is carnage by the final scene! We also have The Box, a four foot by three foot masterpiece of carpentry and artistry.

Some of our performances have been free of charge, some had an admission fee. We wanted to make the production as accessible as possible, to enable young people to attend. The contribution from the BSA is much appreciated. Touring is an expensive business and securing additional funding to supplement the Arts Council grant proves that others believe in our production and what we are trying to do. The reward for me has been watching the faces of our young audience as the play unravels. One teacher emailed me to say it was just the sort of performance her underprivileged children needed, and they hadn’t stopped chatting about it all the way home. But one of my favourite comments, from a 9 year old audience member: Bardolph’s Box ‘made me feel all happy inside’. Then I’m happy too.

BSA Bulletin for April 2016

4th April 2016

New Honorary Fellows

The British Shakespeare Association is delighted to announce that its 2016 Honorary Fellowship Awards are to be given to Emeritus Professor Ann Thompson and to Emeritus Director and Co-Founder of the RSC John Barton. The BSA will be formally honouring Ann and John at the 2016 conference in Hull in a special event, more details of which will be announced shortly. Our full notice can be found here.

BSA exclusive competition: win a pair of tickets to the World Book Night 2016 Gala Evening at the British Library

Courtesy of the British Library, we’re offering BSA members the chance to win tickets to a gala evening on Saturday 23^rd April, 7pm-8.30pm, marking #Shakespeare’s birthday and the 400^th anniversary of his death. Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love, will introduce World Book Night authors past and present, including Matt Haig, Dreda Say Mitchell, S J Parris, Holly Bourne and Sathnam Sanghera.
To enter, simply visit www.hotticketoffers.com/competition/bsaworldbooknight and enter the code BSA. The competition closes on Thu 14 April at 5pm and the winner will be notified shortly after.

Disability and Shakespearean Theatre Symposium

Registration is now open for ‘Disability and Shakespearean Theatre’, a conference supported by the BSA, taking place at the University of Glasgow on 20 April 2016. The symposium will be followed by the premier of Molly Ziegler’s new play Let Her Come In, a one-act rewriting of Hamlet focused on mental illness, gender and disability. Attendance is FREE to BSA members in good standing. For the full schedule and to register, please visitthe conference website.

BSA Journal – new articles

New articles published online this month include Kavita Mudan Finn’s essayon transformative fanworks based on Shakespeare’s history plays and several new reviews of Shakespeare productions in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. 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.

BSA Event Videos

Our website now hosts 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 was published last month. 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 atsarah.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.

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 will include a full education strand as well as an exciting range of concerts, performances, presentations and paper sessions. Registration for the conference will open soon, and all participants must be members of the BSA in good standing. Please visit the conference website for full details.

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, finishes its tour of Kent and the North West in April. 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.

Julius Caesar actor training and performance in Sri Lanka

DUENDE & Stages Theatre Company invite you to attend ‘The Evil That We Do’, a fifteen-day, residential ensemble physical training course culminating in a public performance based on Julius Caesar, taking place in Sri Lanka in May. Fees (£350 for international visitors) include all accommodation and food. Applications are open to emerging and working performers from around the world. For more details, please visit the company 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! We are currently reading King Lear, all are welcome to attend. For details of meetings, please visit the website at http://shakespearebirmingham.co.uk, which also lists all Shakespeare productions happening in the area.

Shakespeare’s Friends and Rivals, 9 April 2016, London Metropolitan Archives

Eva Griffith leads a day of theatre history and biography based around the Red Bull playhouse and the people who lived in the area. The day includes examinations of seventeenth-century documents, an actor-led exploration of new evidence surrounding the death of Shakespeare, a conversation with actor and director Sonia Ritter, and a walking tour around Clerkenwell. For more information and to book, please visit http://www.evagriffith.com/ .

Metamorphosis at Senate House Library

Senate House Library is commemorating the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with a season of activities running from 14 April to 17 December, including a free exhibition, a programme of events and a website with digital content and research resources. Based loosely on the ‘seven ages of man’ speech from As You Like It, the season will reflect the changes in Shakespearean text and scholarship over four centuries. For full details, please visit the website.

Shakespeare’s Musical Brain, 16 April 2016, King’s College London

The Musical Brain is convening a special conference to commemorate the 400^th 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. Seethe 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.

BBC Radio Lancashire celebrates Shakespeare

On Sunday 24th April, 7.30-9.30pm, Ted Robbins is your host as the Bard’s best bits, chosen by BBC Radio Lancashire’s presenters, are performed in a unique multimedia experience. The performance will take place in Hoghton Tower’s Great Barn, a suitable surrounding for the Bard’s works as we mark the 400th anniversary of his death. Tickets are £15 per person.

OCR GCSE English Conference 2016
The GCSE English Conference 2016 will be held on 6 June at Shakespeare’s Globe. All teachers working with GCSE-level students are invited to attend a day of practical workshops, discussions and networking opportunities, including a keynote conversation with Kazuo Ishiguro. There is an early booking discount for payments received before 30 April. For more information, please visit the conference 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

Call for Papers:  ‘Shakespeare and his contemporaries’ Conference in Brazil

The ‘VI Jornada de Estudos Shakespeareanos: Shakespeare e seus contemporâneos’ will be held at Universidade de São Paulo (USP, São Paulo, 10-11 November 2016). Abstracts in English, Spanish or Portuguese are due 30 June 2016. For more information, please contactjornadashakespeare@gmail.com or jornadashakespeare.blogspot.com.

A Walk Around Shakespeare’s London

A Walk Around Shakespeare’s London is a self-guided walk that covers places that William Shakespeare lived and worked in London. Sites visited include The Theatre, The Curtain Theatre, Silver Street, Blackfriars and The Globe theatre. The website contains a downloadable route plan, or it can be used with a mobile device. The route also takes in a few other non-Shakespearean places of interest. The complete walk will take around three hours.

Shakespeare Documented online exhibition launched

Shakespeare Documented is a multi-institutional collaboration convened by the Folger Shakespeare Library to commemorate the 400^th 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.

Disability and Shakespearean Theatre – registration now open

30th March 2016

Registration is now open for the Disability and Shakespearean Theatre symposium, supported by the British Shakespeare Association. Please visit the conference’s Eventbrite page to register – all welcome!

Location: Sir Alwyn Williams Building (L5), Lilybank Gardens, University of Glasgow

Date: Wed 20th April 2016

Attendance: £25 full, £15 concession, free for British Shakespeare Association members

This symposium draws together growing research interest in disability studies and Shakespearean theatre. In discussing the depiction, treatment, and uses of disability in Shakespeare’s work (and that of his contemporaries) alongside analysis of the role of disability in staging of his plays, we hope to encourage interaction between creative practitioners, historians, and literary scholars. Playwright and disability studies scholar Prof. Chris Mounsey (University of Winchester) will give the keynote address on “VariAbility in Shakespeare”, in which he will explore alternative ways of responding to the question of the existence of disability in the Early Modern period, and to one of Shakespeare’s most infamous characters: Richard III.

The symposium venue, the Sir Alwyn Williams Building, is fully accessible, and the symposium will include accommodations such as pre-circulated papers and discussion topics, ending with an interactive roundtable discussion. For more information on access, transport, and the venue please visit the website. Thanks to funding from the British Shakespeare Association, this symposium will be free to attend for BSA members. Symposium attendees are welcome to join the BSA in advance of the event or on the day. School teachers attending the final session of the day (the presentation from Shakespeare Schools Festival) are not required to pay a fee.

If you have any questions, please email the symposium team at disabilityandshakespeare@gmail.com, or contact them via @Disability&SS.

Symposium Schedule:

08.30 – 09.15  Registration and coffee

09.15 – 09.20  Opening remarks

09.20 – 10.20  Keynote address: Prof. Chris Mounsey (University of Winchester), ‘VariAbility in Shakespeare’

10.20 – 10.40 Break (order lunch options)

10.40 – 12.00 Panel 1: Contemporary Rereadings of Shakespeare

• Sarah Olive, University of York. ‘“Miching Mallecho. It means mischief”: problematising representations of actors with learning difficulties in Growing up Downs’
• Katarzyna Ojrzyńska, University of Łódź. ‘Hamlet in a Wheelchair – a Much Needed Icon?’
• Jessica Parrott, University of Warwick, ‘Shakespeare with Chairs – The Bard, Disability and London 2012’

12.00 – 13.00  Lunch (delivered but not included in conference fee)

13.00 – 14.20 Panel 2: Contexualising Early Modern Disabilities on Stage

• Jennifer Nelson, Gallaudet University. ‘Turn a Deaf Ear: The Literary Function of Deafness in Shakespeare and Early Modern England’
• Angelina Del Balzo, UCLA. ‘Limping Witches: Colley Cibber’s Richard III and the Untimely Deformed Woman’
• Kaye McLelland, UCL. ‘Spiritual and Musculoskeletal Integrity in Shakespeare and Early Modern Sermons’

14.20 – 14.40 Break

14.40 – 15.30 Panel 3: Theorising Disability and Stagecraft in Shakespeare

• Morwenna Carr, Lancaster University. ‘The Dramatic Prosthetic: Shakespearean Disability as Stagecraft’
• Christine Gottlieb, UCLA. ‘King Lear as Dismodern Tragedy’

15.30 – 16.45 Wine reception and presentation from Shakespeare Schools Festival

16.45 – 17.15 Move to Gilmorehill Theatre (post-conference performance of Let Her Come In, limited tickets available)

17.30 – 18.30 Performance of Let Her Come In, a one act rewriting of Hamlet, focused on mental illness, gender, and disability, followed by dramatist/director’s Q&A with Molly Ziegler.

2016 Honorary Fellowships Awarded

22nd March 2016

The British Shakespeare Association is delighted to announce that its 2016 Honorary Fellowship Awards are to be given to Emeritus Professor Ann Thompson and to Emeritus Director and Co-Founder of the RSC John Barton.

The association will be formally honouring Ann and John at a special event during our 2016 Conference in Hull: more details of which will be announced shortly.

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 400^th 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 12^th) and a lecture entitled In Nature’s History More Science: Forbidden Planet (March 16^th). 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 400^th 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 400^th 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.uk, which also lists all Shakespeare productions happening in the area.

Vietnamese Shakespeare: your help needed!

1st March 2016

Teaching Shakespeare continues to strive for internationalisation. We’ve heard from educators and students of Shakespeare in America, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway and the UK but there are so many countries about whose Shakespeare we have yet to learn. In September 2016, I’ll be keeping the momentum going with a trip to Vietnam thanks to British Academy funding.

Credit: baolaichau.vn

Firstly, I’m hoping to find new contributors for Teaching Shakespeare. Vietnam is a country from which we haven’t yet heard. Contributors might want to write articles but they could also feature in interview with me or as part of a vox pop or as the focus of an article. I’m looking for folks to talk to about Shakespeare in Vietnamese education: school, university, extramural, lifelong…whatever. It’s just as useful for me to find out that people haven’t encountered Shakespeare, so I’m really interested in talking to anybody who has learnt (and/or taught) English in Vietnam – a non-exclusive list includes university students, school and university teachers, Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese nationals. I also want to offer opportunities for celebration, reflection and improvements on practice to teachers of Vietnamese students (and Vietnamese students of Shakespeare) at Western universities. In short, I’m looking for contacts in, or from, Vietnam and am happy for you to distribute my details to them if it’s not appropriate to pass on theirs (sarah.olive@york.ac.uk).

Additionally, I’m interested in the way that Shakespeare has (or has not) been mediated in Vietnamese education through Japanese language, literature, culture etc. so I’d be equally happy to hear of anyone working in Japanese Shakespeare studies in Vietnam (or Vietnamese Shakespeare studies in Japan, for that matter!) This part of the project aims firstly to understand the intermediatory role that Japan has played in the study of Shakespeare in Vietnam. Students in Vietnam meet Shakespeare as part of Japanese language and culture, ‘de-centered’ from English. It aims to highlight how educational practices around Shakespeare in Vietnam are different from, similar too, influenced by (or resist the influence of) its neighbours.

So, in this 400th anniversary year and Binh Than (year of the fire monkey) that both promise to reward inquisitiveness and curiosity, I look forward to hearing from you about Vietnamese Shakespeare!

Best wishes,

Sarah

Teaching Shakespeare 9 is out!

22nd February 2016

I’m pleased to announce that the ninth issue of Teaching Shakespeare, a special 400th anniversary edition, is now available for free download.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE PDF

You can read back issues of Teaching Shakespeare elsewhere on this website.

BSA Videos!

19th February 2016

The British Shakespeare Association is proud to announce that it is now able to publish videos of its events. Our first film is a recording of the November 2015 Fellowship Event, when Chris Grace and Dame Janet Suzman accepted honorary fellowships of the association before each speaking of their life-long work with Shakespeare.

The first fifteen minutes of the event are available to all, via YouTube.

The full event is available to our members via a new area of the website:

View Event Videos

If you are not a member, click here to join:

Join the BSA

BSA Bulletin for February 2016

1st February 2016

BSA appoints New Education Trustees

The Board is pleased to welcome two new co-opted trustees, Karen Eckersall and Chris Green, to the BSA board. Karen and Chris will be working closely with Sarah Olive, chair of the Education Committee, to help the BSA develop its Education strategy. You can find full details of the Board at the BSA People page.

 New Honorary Fellows: Chris Grace and Dame Janet Suzman

On 7 November 2015, the BSA awarded Lifetime Honorary Fellowships to Chris Grace and Dame Janet Suzman in an event at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Janet Suzman discussed her groundbreaking work as a director and actor in conversation with Alison Findlay, and Chris Grace gave an illustrated lecture on his work in creating Shakespeare – The Animated Tales and the Shakespeare Schools Festival. For more information about the Fellows, please visit our webpage.

 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.

Recent articles published online include John V .  Nance’s investigation of the authorship of 2 Henry VI and Lars Harald Maagero’s discussion of communication in a Norwegian A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 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.

New BSA Education blog

On the BSA Education blog this month, Laura Louise Nicklin reviews the TECbook learning resource for Much Ado about Nothing.

Preparing for Hull 2016

The 2016 annual conference, ‘Shakespearean Transformations: Death, Life, and Afterlives’, takes place 8-11 September 2016 at the University of Hull. Please visit the conference website for full details. Highlights include Spymonkey performing The Complete Deaths at Hull Truck (all the onstage deaths in Shakespeare in one show) and a conference dinner held among the fish tanks at The Deep, one of the most spectacular aquariums in the world and home to 3,500 fish.

Disability and Shakespearean Theatre Symposium

The BSA is supporting this conference, taking place at the University of Glasgow on 20 April 2016. 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).

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.

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.

‘On Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ at King’s College London

Working with King’s College London, the Arden Shakespeare and the British Council, the Royal Society of Literature has commissioned some of the country’s greatest poets to respond in verse to Shakespeare’s sonnets. Join us to celebrate the publication of the anthology, On Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A Poets’ Celebration, and listen to ten poets read and discuss their work. The reading is chaired by Shakespeare scholar Margreta de Grazia. 11 February 2016, 7pm, King’s College London.

Shakespeare and Democracy talks and workshops

Celebrate Shakespeare’s 400^th anniversary with a talk or workshop by Gabriel Chanan, author of the newly published Shakespeare and Democracy (Troubador, 2015). Shakespeare’s vision of how societies hold together or break apart is startlingly relevant today, and Gabriel illustrates this through a range of tailored events exploring gender, war, subversion and democracy. For more information, please see here or contact gabriel.chanan@talktalk.net .

Sonnets for Schools Competition

Are you a budding bard? Do you know someone who is? Are you a teacher with a class full of young talent just waiting for a good challenge? Writers from schools all over the Portsmouth area can now become part of Much Ado about Portsmouth by writing their own sonnet and entering it in the Sonnets for Schools Competition. For more information, please visit the website. Entries must be received by 4 March 2016.

Shakespeare: Birmingham

Shakespeare:Birmingham organises weekly gatherings / play readings in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham (Tuesdays, 6.30-9.00pm) and monthly workshops aimed at increasing enjoyment of Shakespeare through any means possible! All are welcome to attend. For details of meetings, please visit the website at http ://shakespearebirmingham . co . uk, which also lists all Shakespeare productions happening in the area.

Antony Sher interview at The Guardian

In a Guardian Live event in London, Sir Antony Sher offers a frank account of his struggles on and off the stage, talking about his new book, Year of the Fat Knight, his early days in South Africa and his 28-year relationship with director Greg Doran. The full recording of the event is available at the Guardian website.

New Books by BSA Member

BSA member Cedric Watts has two new books: Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’: A Critical Introduction (London: PublishNation, 2015), and Shakespeare’s Puzzles (London: PublishNation, 2014). Shakespeare Puzzles (‘lively … informative entertainment’, Times Literary Supplement) contains 25 puzzles ranging from ‘The Sonnets: autobiographical or fictional?’ to ‘Prospero’s Epilogue: is it really Shakespeare’s farewell?’. Cedric Watts is general editor of the Wordsworth Classics’ Shakespeare series and the author of several critical books.

Indian Shakespeares on Screen conference and film festival in London

‘Indian Shakespeares on Screen’ examines the full influence of Shakespeare in Indian cinema. The project will include a major international conference and exhibition at Asia House, London (27-29 April), followed by a film festival at BFI Southbank (29-30 April) featuring screenings of the Indian Shakespeare trilogy Maqbool (Macbeth), Omkara (Othello) and Haider (Hamlet) and public interviews with the films’ screenwriters and director Vishal Bhardwaj. For more information please visit the conference website or email shakespeareandbollywood@gmail.com.

Shakespeare Documented online exhibition launched

Shakespeare Documented is a multi-institutional collaboration convened by the Folger Shakespeare Library to commemorate the 400^th 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.

Public Lecture: Shakespeare’s Henry V and Scotland

On Thursday 11th February, Professor Lorna Hutson will present a lecture entitled ‘Thinking with causes: Henry V and Scotland’ at the Sheffield Centre for Early Modern Studies. Written at the time of the accession of a Scots king to the English throne, Henry V has been called a ‘succession play’. Yet its representation of Scotland goes unmentioned by critics, a silence that this lecture will address. This lecture is free and open to all.

New Book by BSA Member

1st December 2015

The BSA is delighted to announce the publication of a new book by one of our members, available from retailers now. Details and an extract from the book can be found below.

Shakespeare Calling – the book

Why Shakespeare?  Who is this Hamlet? Is Lady Macbeth really evil? Can Caliban really be a twitchy speeded Goth freak? What’s so interesting about Lady Blanche, Lucius, Queen Margaret, Cassius, Paulina, Emilia, Celia…? These and many more questions sent the new Bardolator Ruby Jand on 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.
Shakespeare Calling – the book is a personal journey based on four years of blogging Shakespeare. It is useful for students in the classroom and out, for group discussions and individual analysis, for academic studies and enjoyment, a book to be read by theatre enthusiasts and anybody who has ever wondered, ‘Why Shakespeare?’

It is available as a Kindle book on Amazon and from the publisher (or info@vulkan.se)

Ruby Jand (Rubyjandshakespearecalling@gmail.com) has worked as an English and history teacher at a community council school for adults in Sundbyberg, Sweden. She is now retired but continues to lecture on Shakespeare in schools and libraries.

Excerpt from Shakespeare Calling – the book:

Like Father Like Daughters?

in

King Lear

Two questions always bother me when reading or seeing this, Shakespeare’s most emotionally gruesome play, King Lear: Are Goneril and Regan as awful as everyone says they are? And if they are – why?  What is there in the text that prompts directors to immediately show them as haughty, false, lying, hypocritical, vampy, etc., etc., from the moment they walk onto the stage?

To quote a few of the characters, my answer is, ‘Nothing.’

Maybe I’m missing something but in the whole first scene what I see are two respectable older daughters and a saucy younger one, and a manipulative, hypocritical, hot-tempered, frighteningly irrational father.

Here’s the situation. The old king, to the surprise of everyone and the dismay of some, is retiring and dividing his kingdom equally among his three daughters. Sounds good, right? But in the very first lines of the play we are informed that Lear tends to play favourites: Kent says to Gloucester: ‘I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.’ That is, Goneril’s husband more than Regan’s husband.  Gloucester agrees but goes on to say that now that things are to be divided equally, who knows?

Enter the king and the whole gang.  In the eleventh line he speaks, Lear reveals himself to be an emotional manipulator:

…Tell me, my daughters,
Which of you shall we say doth love us most,
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where merit doth most challenge it? (Scene 1)

Wha’?! He just told them it would be divided equally, now they have to compete by loving him most?  I think the daughters can be excused for being a bit puzzled but Goneril and Regan are daughters to a king, wives to dukes and heads of great households. They are trained in the art of diplomacy as would all women of their class be. Goneril starts with, ‘Sir, I do love you more than words can wield the matter…’ Regan ends with, ‘…I am alone felicitate/ In your dear highness’ love.’

Flowery yes, but hypocritical? Why should we think so?  This is a ceremonial moment. They are put on the spot.  They rise to the occasion and if we might think, ‘Why should they love the brutal old coot – I wouldn’t!’ I doubt that we would say so if we were in their position.