Promoting the study, practice
and enjoyment of Shakespeare.
28th November 2017
We are pleased to announce that the thirteenth issue of Teaching Shakespeare, a special guest take-over issue, is now available for free download.
You can read back issues of Teaching Shakespeare elsewhere on this website.
2nd November 2017
Members of the BSA may be interested in the following event.
https://beinghumanfestival.org/event/shakespeares-emotions-lost-and-found/
This free event, supported by the British Shakespeare Association and organized as part of the UK-wide ‘Being Human’ festival, will explore how emotion is represented in Shakespeare’s plays and what this means to us today.
Join academics from the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute and theatre practitioners from the Royal Shakespeare Company as they discuss the drama, history, philosophy, theatrical and personal dimensions of emotion in Shakespeare. Attendees will also have the chance to work with passages from Shakespeare’s plays chosen by members of the panel as part of this interactive event.
Booking is required using the link above.
9th October 2017
At the major English: Shared Futures conference in Newcastle in July, Lindy Rudd was one of the speakers on a panel convened by the British Shakespeare Association to consider aspects of teaching Shakespeare’s works across all sectors of education. Lindy works in the College Higher Education sector as Curriculum Leader for GCSE English at Peterborough Regional College.
The resources from Lindy’s presentation are now available to access on the members-only area of the BSA website. Her talk (entitled ‘Condemn the fault and not the actor of it? Barriers to learning in CHE’) explored the growth of the ‘consumer culture’ in education and the corresponding impact on creativity in the CHE sector in particular.
5th October 2017
Earlier this year, the BSA was pleased to sponsor the following event at the London Metropolitan Archives. Lynne Wainwright reports on how it went.
On the 9th September 2017, The First Playhouse in Drury Lane: a symposium on the Cockpit-Phoenix was held at the London Metropolitan Archives. Dr Eva Griffith and Liverpool John Moores’ Dr Rebecca Bailey led the event with the assistance of interns Alina Burwitz and Lynne Wainwright also of Liverpool John Moores. Advertised through a successful social media campaign, the symposium sold out the week before it took place with promoted papers given by leading academics researching early modern drama. With chronologically ordered, publicly accessible papers given, general enjoyment was notably enhanced by the professional actors and musicians paid for through ticket sales alongside a British Shakespeare Association grant.
Jessica Eucker and Oliver Doyle (‘Musica Antica Rotherhithe’) with lutenist Peter Martin. Photograph by Anthony Bellon.
Dale Mathurin (L) and Tunji Kasim (R). Photograph by Anthony Bellon.
Cassie Layton. Photograph by Anthony Bellon.
Nigel Hastings, Cassie Layton and Tunji Kasim were added to the ensemble where the comedic timing of Hastings, Moore and Mathurin had the whole room laughing. The tragic Tis Pity scene between Layton and Kasim was a highlight, whilst Joe Furey’s country-accent was pitch perfect for Shirley comedy. Jason Morrell created and led fluid interpretations, breathing life into a number of neglected plays that certainly deserve to be resurrected.
27th July 2017
On 30th June 2017, Sarah Olive gave a presentation on the impact beyond academia of Teaching Shakespeare to a committee in the Department of Education, University of York. Present were Baroness Morris of Yardley; Anthony Tomei CBE, Director of the Salters’ Institute; and Tom McBride, Director of Evidence, Early Intervention Foundation as well as senior departmental figures including the Head of Department, Dr Beatrice Szczepek Reed, and outgoing and incoming directors of research, Professor Robert Klassen and Dr Emma Marsden.
The presentation traced the way in which Sarah’s ongoing research on Shakespeare in education has suggested a disjoin between the amount of international Shakespeare teaching activity and the accessibility (economic, temporal and aesthetic) of critical and reflective writing for Shakespeare educators worldwide. It briefly outlined the history of the magazine, with Professor Stuart Hampton-Reeves, then President of the BSA, inviting Sarah to found and edit the journal with him, Dr James Stredder, then Chair of the Education Committee, and Debbie Williams, Head of UCLan Publishing. The idea was to contribute to filling this gap and to enable the BSA to better represent, serve and connect with its non-academic members (or those with roles in academia and other sectors).
The presentation was a wonderful reflective opportunity, providing opportunity to think about the sorts of impact we would like to evidence and achieve with the magazine in the future. It was also fun to marvel at a few headlines:
The committee unanimously praised the magazine’s achievements thus far. However, they suggested that collecting the views and experiences of readers and contributors with roles outside academia – about the magazine’s impact on their practices, from the choice of Shakespearean texts for reading and teaching to confidence with Shakespeare (and everything inbetween), career development, extracurricular Shakespeare activities with participants of any age (calling am dram stars and directors!), thinking about and attitudes towards teaching Shakespeare – is critical to demonstrating its impact.
If you have time to help us with this, by participating in a Skype or telephone interview (around 30 minutes) with Dr Chelsea Swift (University of Lancaster), please email c.swift1@lancaster.ac.uk by 24th July. A £10 Amazon voucher awaits you as a small token of our thanks. For further details of the study see our previous blog post.
25th July 2017
NEWS FROM THE TRUSTEES
CALL FOR PAPERS: British Shakespeare Association annual conference: Shakespeare Studies Today, Queen’s University Belfast, 14-17 June 2018
Shakespeare Studies is one of the most rich and dynamic areas of interdisciplinary enquiry. It embraces historical explorations of Shakespeare’s canon, ranges across four hundred years of world theatre and performance history, and is continually renewed by Shakespeare’s iconic status in contemporary culture, film and media. Shakespeare draws together academics, teachers, theatre professionals, practitioners, readers and enthusiasts. At the same time, Shakespeare is a global commodity, reinvented in every culture and nation, meaning that his work prompts world-wide conversation. Following on from the 2016 celebrations, the 2018 BSA conference offers an opportunity for academics, practitioners enthusiasts and teachers (primary, secondary and sixth- form teachers and college lecturers) to reflect upon Shakespeare Studies today. Plenary Speakers include: Prof. Pascale Aebischer (University of Exeter), Prof. Clara Calvo (University of Murcia), Prof. Richard Dutton (Queen’s University Belfast), Prof. Courtney Lehmann (University of the Pacific) and Prof. Ayanna Thompson (George Washington University). UK Premieres include: Veeram (dir. Jayaraj, 2016), a South Indian film adaptation of Macbeth, and Hermia and Helena (dir. Matías Piñeiro, 2016), an Argentine adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. BSA 2018 also includes: Q+As with theatre director Andrea Montgomery (The Belfast Tempest, 2016) and film directors Jayaraj and Matías Piñeiro.
There are four ways to participate in BSA 2018:
For full details of the available seminars and all other information, please visit this link: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/bsa-news/call-for-papers-2018-bsa-conference/
BSA election of new Trustees
As several Trustees are now approaching the end of their terms of service, the Board of Trustees of the British Shakespeare Association wishes to appoint new Trustees to take up positions on the Board in September 2017. Nominations have been received and an election is now in progress. All current members of the BSA are entitled to vote. Details on how to do this will be circulated to current members today. The ballot will close on 31st August.
Nominations open for our Honorary Fellowships for 2018
This year, 2017, the BSA Honorary Fellowships are to be given to Sarah Stanton—formerly Publisher of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature Studies at Cambridge University Press—and to the actor Adrian Lester. The BSA’s Fellowship Committee would like to invite all current Members of the BSA to offer nominations for next year’s award. The choice for nomination should fulfil the following criterion: ‘The title of ‘Honorary Fellow of the British Shakespeare Association’ should be reserved for those who, at whatever level, have made, or are making, over a significant period of time, a major contribution to the field of Shakespeare activities, whether it be in Scholarship, Education more generally, or in the Performance of the plays.’ All nominations, from whichever area or constituency, require the names of two nominators (a Proposer and a Seconder) and a formal written proposal, stating the case for nomination. This text should be at least 250 words in length. The closing date for nominations is 1st September 2017. Full information on how to submit nominations are available here: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/bsa-news/nominations-open-for-our-2018-fellowships/
Annual conferences for 2018, 2019, and 2020
The institutions that will host our three upcoming annual conferences and their titles are as follows. The BSA Annual Conference of 2018 will take place at Queen’s University Belfast on 14-17 June under the title Shakespeare Studies Today. Swansea University will host the conference in 2019 with the title Shakespeare: Race and Nation, while in 2020 it will take place at the University of Surrey and the theme will be Shakespeare in Action. We would like to thank all three institutions for the hard work they have invested in their applications, and we look forward to visiting Belfast, Swansea, and Surrey in due course. The Belfast and Swansea BSA conferences will be the first to take place in Northern Ireland and in Wales, respectively, which is enormously exciting, as the BSA would have visited all four constituent nations of the United Kingdom by the end of 2019.
BSA funding available for conference, events, and other activities
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 ( Susan.Anderson@shu.ac.uk) or the Chair of the Education Committee, Sarah Olive (sarah.olive@york.ac.uk).
LAST DAY: £10 Amazon voucher offered in return for your participation in a study of Teaching Shakespeare’s impact
We are currently carrying out an evaluation of the impact of Teaching Shakespeare, the British Shakespeare Association magazine, which aims to provide support for Shakespeare educators across sectors. This evaluation is being carried out by the editor and founder of the magazine Dr Sarah Olive and research assistant at the University of York, Dr Chelsea Swift. The British Shakespeare Association are also a named project partner. The aim of this evaluation is to evidence the impact of the magazine on its non-academic readership (and those who hold roles in other sectors as well as academia). This is with a view to gaining a better understanding of how it is read and used by practitioners, and how its relevance to educators and usefulness for practitioners might be strengthened. We are interested in how and why you read the magazine and whether and how the magazine has influenced or changed your thinking about, attitudes towards and practices when teaching Shakespeare.
As a ‘thank you’ for participating in a short telephone or Skype interview with a researcher, each interviewee will receive a £10 Amazon voucher. If you are willing and able to participate, would like further information or have any further questions, please contact Dr Chelsea Swift (c.swift1@lancaster.ac.uk) today, July 24th, giving your name and the address to which you would like your Amazon voucher posted. We will ensure you receive it ASAP.
Your participation would be much appreciated, we look forward to hearing from you soon.
Dr Sarah Olive and Dr Chelsea Swift
ACADEMIC OPPORTUNITIES AND CONFERENCES
Teachers’ Conference: Shakespeare and Creativity, The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 3-5 August 2017 POSTPONED
Please note that the first Teachers’ Conference organised by the BSA and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has now been postponed until further notice. We will keep members informed of future updates.
BSA ONLINE
The new film of Macbeth, directed by Kit Monkman (2017), reviewed by Alison Findlay and Ramona Wray
Our Chair, Professor Alison Findlay, and our trustee Dr Ramona Wray review Kit Monkman’s new film of Macbeth: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/bsa-news/a-review-of-macbeth-dir-kit-monkman-2017/
Report from the Living and Dying Well in the Early Modern World Conference, University of Exeter, 15-16 June 2017
The BSA is proud to have sponsored the Living and Dying Well in the Early Modern World conference at the University of Exeter on 15th and 16th June 2017. The following report is by Bailey Sincox, a PhD student at Harvard University: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/bsa-news/report-from-the-living-and-dying-well-in-the-early-modern-world-conference/
Reports from the Offensive Shakespeare Conference, Northumbria University, 23-24 May 2017
The BSA is proud to have sponsored the Offensive Shakespeare Conference at Northumbria University on 23rd and 24th May 2017. Our website includes reports written by those who received BSA bursaries for the event: John Rowell and Shauna O’Brien. They are available here: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/bsa-news/reports-from-the-offensive-shakespeare-conference/
New Editors for the Education Network Blog
As of February 2017, following on from the excellent work of Dr Sarah Olive, our Education Network blog will be jointly edited by the BSA’s two Teaching Trustees: Chris Green and Karen Eckersall. Chris and Karen will welcome any contributions to the education network blog. You can contact them with articles, ideas or questions at the following email addresses: Chris Green – Karen Eckersall – More information on: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/bsa-news/new-editors-of-the-education-network-blog/
PUBLICATIONS
Teaching Shakespeare 12 is out!
We are pleased to announce that the twelfth issue of Teaching Shakespeare and the first ever summer issue of the magazine, with articles on Shakespeare in Hanoi, on Shakespeare and autistic students, on young offenders and Othello, and on digitized promptbooks, is now available for free download. You can download your free copy here: http ://www . britishshakespeare . ws/bsa-news/teaching-shakespeare-12-is-out/
MEMBERS’ NEWSROUND
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 our Membership Officer, José A. Pérez Díez, at membership@britishshakespeare.ws. Items below are not affiliated with or endorsed by the BSA – please use individual contact details for more information.
The Story of the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon 1824-2016, Susan Brock and Sylvia Morris, available now.
In their new book, The Story of the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon 1824-2016, Susan Brock and Sylvia Morris answer the question “How did it come about that a small market town in the centre of England became the focus of the worldwide worship of Shakespeare?” After all, London’s claims were much stronger being the place where he became famous and spent the most productive years of his life. The story of the part played by the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon, set up nearly 200 years ago by ordinary townsfolk and still in existence today, is told in this alternative history of the town. The Club was responsible for organising the first local festivities for Shakespeare’s Birthday on 23 April in 1827, 1830 and 1833. It played an important part in saving Shakespeare’ s Birthplace and setting up the Birthplace Trust. It worked towards the preservation of the Shakespeare monuments and the graves in Holy Trinity Church and it played a huge part in setting up the theatres in Stratford so that Shakespeare’s plays have a permanent home for their performance outside London. The fully-illustrated book is based on documentary evidence provided by the rich archives of the Club dating back to its foundation in 1824 and the archives of Stratford-upon-Avon which are preserved in the collections of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Published by the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon, copies (£12.99) are available direct from www . stratfordshakespeareclub . org or write to stratfordshakespeareclub@gmail.com.
King Lear (alone), one-man play with inamoment theatre.
After its highly acclaimed full outing last year, inamoment theatre’s one-man play King Lear (alone) is this month appearing at the Buxton Fringe Festival (13,14 & 15) and the Bristol Shakespeare Festival (27,28 & 29). Full details can be found at www . kinglearalone . uk. Using mostly Shakespeare’s words, it’s an astonishing piece of immersive theatre retelling the events that led to Lear’s tragedy. “I left the theatre feeling like I’d been exposed to a flawed individual at their most honest . . . ” “King Lear (Alone) is a gripping production and the formidable performance given by Bob Young makes it compelling viewing.” “Bob Young in the title role, is a powerful performer. His tormented character takes shape thanks to his profound voice, whilst his presence on stage appears carefully studied….. In Bob Young’s poignant (portrayal), the play is quite intense.”
Hamlet’s Bastard by Mick Foster
This new novel developed from a well-received production of the play by Chelmsford Theatre Workshop. The CTW production took the view that the Prince and his father are selfish and rather callous characters, something that audiences overlook because of the glamour cast by the glorious language. We emphasised the cruelty of the Prince, and gave a relatively sympathetic portrayal of Claudius. The novel develops these ideas. It tells the story from the viewpoint of a bastard son of the young Prince, who interviews the survivors and uncovers a different perspective on what happened and why. The bastard son also finds himself embroiled in court politics under the Norwegian King Fortinbras. The way he deals with the danger of being the only surviving member of the Danish royal family provides a contrast to his father’s tragic story. The novel is available at http ://www . amazon . com/author/mickfoster.
24th July 2017
Members of the BSA are asked to read the following candidate profiles carefully, before voting for up to six of the eight nominees. The password for access to the voting system will have been sent to all members in the most recent bulletin.
Voting closes at noon on 31st August.
For over 30 years I have been an independent Consultant, providing an IT & Finance service to Local Authorities, Charities, and Housing Associations throughout the country. I have served as a Trustee for a number of public-sector organisations, and most recently I worked as the Secretary to the Trustees for a small Charity.
My passion for Shakespeare, and the effects his work continues to have on us, is quite intense and goes back many years. If elected I feel I could bring to the Association benefits arising out of my experience as an active independent Theatre Practitioner, as well as a Workshop facilitator of Shakespeare’s works:
I run my own Theatre company, inamoment theatre (www.inamoment.org.uk), writing, creating, directing and producing original plays for performance in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Buxton, London, Manchester, Bath and Bristol. Over the last 13 years I have written and produced 7 plays exploring the life and works of Shakespeare, using the themes, words, and characters from his plays.
Three years ago, I set up The AfterShakespeare Collaboration (www.aftershakespeare.co.uk) which seeks to better understand how, and why, Shakespeare achieved what he did, and also what his work has directly or indirectly inspired since his death.
I run weekly Shakespeare Play Reading group, and have found it to be a fascinating way of understanding and discussing his words and works. I also currently provide workshops and day sessions for groups of people to explore Shakespeare’s plays in more depth.
For me, Shakespeare belongs to everybody and, if elected, I would draw on my own experience and interest to help secure a higher profile for Theatre Practitioners and Community groups within the Association’s membership and activities, as I feel that with more involvement, these sectors could help the Association’s goal of making Shakespeare more accessible and available for all.
Until last year, Karen Eckersall was a teacher and literature co-ordinator at a secondary school in inner-city Salford. As this school is the hub school for English School-Centred Initial Teacher Training in her area, she also lead sessions in active approaches to teaching literature there. She is passionate about innovative teaching and learning of Shakespeare’s work with her main focus being on Key Stages 3 and 4. She is an encourager of social mobility and an obsessive theatregoer. Karen co-runs the British Shakespeare Association Twitter account, and has tripled its size. She is currently using her years of teaching experience to create a set of resources aimed at Key Stages 3 and 4, focusing on Shakespeare’s work, with the aim of facilitating an engaging and varied learning experience for students and helpful and user friendly materials for teaching colleagues.
Elizabeth Glyn is an investment manager who runs her own firm in London. She has nearly 20 years’ of experience in financial services, managing pension funds and hedge funds invested in Global Equity funds. She is a CFA charterholder and she has been very involved in the charitable sector in various ways. In her other life, she has a PhD on Shakespeare’s Queenship from Kings College London, where she has taught courses in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period, and a Masters in Medieval History. Her PhD specifically looked at Shakespeare’s most controversial queens and their techniques of influence; negotiation, intercession and obstruction.
In 2016, I moved from Australia to take up the position of University Academic Fellow in Textual Studies and Digital Editing at the University of Leeds. My research on Shakespeare and early modern drama is split between three complementary elements: textual studies (scholarly editing in print and digital formats, editorial and publishing history), computational stylistics (authorship attribution and other quantitative studies), and literary-cultural history (the early modern cultural appropriation of medieval antisemitic narratives and motifs). In addition to my ongoing work as a co-editor of the journal Shakespeare, I am eager to contribute to the international profile and outreach of the BSA as a Trustee, with particular responsibilities for website management and development. My relevant professional experience includes election to two terms as Vice President of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association (2010–12, 2014–16), one term as Treasurer of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (2014–16), and three terms as Secretary of the Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group (2012, 2013, 2014). I continue to serve on the ANZSA Executive Committee and as the Association’s Webmaster, as I have done since 2007.
Chris Green is head of the English and Drama faculty at a large secondary school in Cambridge, and is Director of Studies for an annual summer school (where there is a strong emphasis on the teaching of Shakespeare) run in Cambridge for overseas students. He is also Principal Examiner of the Shakespeare paper in the A-Level English Literature specification run by a major UK Awarding Body (for which he also produces training materials and resources). He is the author of several textbooks and teaching guides – and he has been fortunate to work using Shakespeare’s plays in a number of contexts around the world.
Chris has enjoyed being a co-opted Teaching Trustee of the British Shakespeare Association for the past 18 months – attending meetings and conferences in Stratford, Hull and York. He organised and chaired a panel for the BSA (about teaching Shakespeare from Primary to University level) at the ‘Shared Futures’ conference in Newcastle. He also liaised with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust – on behalf of the BSA – to plan a summer school for teachers of English and Drama. He works with another of the Board’s trustees to run the BSA’s education network blog.
Chris has a strong belief in the importance of making Shakespeare’s work accessible to a wide readership and audience (both on the page and on the stage) and of using the scripts to encourage creativity and ‘play’ in students right across the age range.
The intersecting worlds of working with Shakespeare I inhabit are education, theatre, and academia, and my interest in becoming a trustee for the BSA is in promoting better connections and understanding between these three worlds. I am particularly interested in the new Performance and Media sub-committee, which seeks to represent and support the theatre community, and the potential this has for cross-overs with education.
Following fifteen years as a teacher of English and drama in the UK and internationally, and a year gaining an MA from the Shakespeare Institute, I have worked with the RSC for the last ten years as a practitioner, project manager and researcher. Six of those years were full-time and included leading the education project for the World Shakespeare Festival. The last four years have been as an Associate Practitioner, alongside completing my PhD at the University of Warwick (exploring the value of theatre-based practice for education). All this has given me wide experience of working with different artists and organisations and some understanding of arts funding and policies.
My key passion is in exploring how Shakespeare’s language communicates and how his plays can support intercultural understanding. Through my association with the RSC I have met many talented artists, often with a strong interest in the educational value of their work. I also work closely with Butterfly Theatre Company who specialise in site-specific Shakespeare, calling on a large ensemble of young actors, directors and designers who are passionate about supporting audiences to value and enjoy the plays. Other artists I know use Shakespeare to inspire their filmmaking, music, poetry and visual arts. I would love to help the BSA support greater recognition of the breadth of this creative work.
My relationship with Shakespeare is experiential rather than academic as I am a teacher with strong links to theatre. First encounters with Shakespeare are crucial as they shape a person’s experiences with his work, building foundations for future perceptions. It is, therefore, important that these encounters in our schools are stimulating, engaging and active. I have completed a Masters in the Advanced Teaching of Shakespeare which has made me acutely aware of the dynamic ways in which Shakespeare can be taught and I use such approaches in my teaching. I believe that Shakespeare should be introduced into the curriculum as early as possible through drama-style activities. These can be the first steps into a lifelong, positive relationship with Shakespeare. Encounters with Shakespeare at the theatre are equally important. Theatres are at the forefront in engagement with Shakespeare, also offering opportunities for positive engagement. As a volunteer steward at Shakespeare’s Globe and a keen patron of the RSC I have seen most of Shakespeare’s plays performed and see the variety of ways in which they can be presented as crucial in keeping his legacy fresh and relevant. I have also attended education workshops at both of these theatres and see the importance of their education and outreach work in reaching out to new, younger audiences, something that I believe is essential in creating the next generation of Shakespeare enthusiasts and scholars and I would like to see the BSA work on these links to widen interest and participation with his plays. I have been part of the BSA’s Education Committee since 2016 and I have written for Teaching Shakespeare magazine as well as other educational publications. I presented a paper on performing Shakespeare for the BSA’s most recent conference and represented them at the recent English Association Shared Futures Conference.
I am a lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Bristol. Originally a theatre director, I have extensive industry-based and academic experience of theatre, having played a key role in large-scale practice-based research projects such as ‘Staging the Henrician Court’ and ‘Staging the Scottish Court’. My expertise in this area is evidenced by a number of publications and performances, most recently a co-guest edited special issue of Shakespeare Bulletin on ‘(Re)constructed Spaces for Performance: Research in Practice’, and a Research-in-Action workshop for Shakespeare’s Globe entitled ‘Walking the City in the Indoor Playhouse’. In my role at Bristol I teach and practice early modern drama, programme seasons for the Wickham Theatre, and frequently engage with theatre-makers in Bristol and beyond.
However my interest extends beyond my job: I am a lifelong theatre-goer as much interested in contemporary drama as I am early modern. I attend theatre festivals from Edinburgh Fringe to Mayfest, and travel widely to see important theatre productions. I am also committed to attending live streamed plays and think these constitute a fundamental shift in the consumption of Shakespeare. During the twenty-first century a seismic change has occurred not only to early modern theatre but UK performance at large, in which there has been a move away from ‘text-based’ drama to more director-led and experimental performance – detectible in the works of European directors such as Ivo van Hove and British directors such as Katie Mitchell and Robert Icke (please see my review of Hamlet). While I do not always agree with critiques levelled at ‘traditional’ means of performing Shakespeare I am well placed to discuss them, and believe I can bring a great deal of professional expertise to the Performance and Media sub-committee should I be fortunate enough to be appointed trustee.
14th July 2017
Image from The Belfast Tempest (dir. Andrea Montgomery, 2016), Terra Nova Productions. Courtesy of Neil Harrison (models Sean Brown and Louise Parker).
Shakespeare Studies is one of the most rich and dynamic areas of interdisciplinary enquiry. It embraces historical explorations of Shakespeare’s canon, ranges across four hundred years of world theatre and performance history, and is continually renewed by Shakespeare’s iconic status in contemporary culture, film and media. Shakespeare draws together academics, teachers, theatre professionals, practitioners, readers and enthusiasts. At the same time, Shakespeare is a global commodity, reinvented in every culture and nation, meaning that his work prompts world-wide conversation. Following on from the 2016 celebrations, the 2018 BSA conference offers an opportunity for academics, practitioners enthusiasts and teachers (primary, secondary and sixth- form teachers and college lecturers) to reflect upon Shakespeare Studies today. What does Shakespeare Studies mean in the here-and-now? What are the current and anticipated directions in such diverse fields of enquiry as Shakespeare and pedagogy, Shakespeare and race, Shakespeare and the body, Shakespeare and childhood, Shakespeare and religion, Shakespeare and economics, Shakespeare and the law, Shakespeare and emotion, Shakespeare and politics, Shakespeare and war and Shakespeare and the environment? What is Shakespeare’s place inside the curriculum and inside debates around theory, queer studies and feminism? Where are we in terms of editing and materiality, and where does Shakespeare sit alongside his contemporaries, male and female? How does theatre practice, performance history, adaptation, cinema and citation figure in ever evolving Shakespeare Studies? In particular, this conference is keen to explore the challenges facing Shakespeare Studies today and to reflect on newer emergent approaches. Reflections on past practices and their reinventions for the future are also warmly welcomed.
Plenary Speakers include: Prof. Pascale Aebischer (University of Exeter), Prof. Clara Calvo (University of Murcia), Prof. Richard Dutton (Queen’s University Belfast), Prof. Courtney Lehmann (University of the Pacific) and Prof. Ayanna Thompson (George Washington University).
UK Premieres include: Veeram (dir. Jayaraj, 2016), a South Indian film adaptation of Macbeth, and Hermia and Helena (dir. Matías Piñeiro, 2016), an Argentine adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
BSA 2018 also includes: Q+As with theatre director Andrea Montgomery (The Belfast Tempest, 2016) and film directors Jayaraj and Matías Piñeiro.
There are four ways to participate in BSA 2018:
‘Digital Shakespeare: Histories/Resources/Methods’ led by Dr Stephen O’Neill (Maynooth University);
‘Shakespeare and Act/Scene Division’ led by Dr Mark Hutchings (University of Reading);
‘Shakespeare and the Book Today’ led by Prof. Emma Smith (Hertford College, Oxford);
‘Shakespeare and his Contemporaries’ led by Dr Lucy Munro (King’s College, London);
‘Shakespeare and Early Modern Playing Spaces’ led by Prof. Richard Dutton (Queen’s University Belfast);
‘Shakespeare and Europe’ led by Prof. Andrew Hiscock (Bangor University) and Prof. Natalie Vienne-Guerrin (University of Montpellier III-Paul Valéry);
‘Shakespeare and Film’ led by Dr Romano Mullin (Queen’s University Belfast);
‘Shakespeare and Marx’ led by Dr Matt Williamson (Queen’s University Belfast);
‘Shakespeare and Morality’ led by Dr Neema Parvini (University of Surrey);
‘Shakespeare and Pedagogy’ led by Dr Lindzy Brady (University of Sydney) and Dr Kate Flaherty (Australian National University);
‘Shakespeare, Performance and the 21st Century’ led by Dr Erin Sullivan (Shakespeare Institute, the University of Birmingham);
‘Shakespeare and Religion’ led by Dr Adrian Streete (University of Glasgow);
‘Women, Shakespeare and Performance’, led by Prof. Liz Schafer (Royal Holloway, University of London)
A number of Postgraduate / Practitioner / Teacher Bursaries will be available to cover the conference fee. When you submit your abstract / proposal, please indicate if you would like to apply for one of these and if you would like to attend all of the conference or Saturday only.
30th June 2017
By Alison Findlay (Lancaster University) and Ramona Wray (Queen’s University Belfast)
Cast: Mark Rowley (Macbeth), Akiya Henry (Lady Macbeth), Al Weaver (Banquo) and Dai Bradley (Projectionist/Porter). Design: Kimie Nakano. Score: Gregory Spears. Adaptation: Judith Buchanan, Tom Mattinson and Kit Monkman. Production Company: GSP Studios.
Like the play itself, ‘bold, bloody and resolute’, this extraordinary new Macbeth film (dir. Kit Monkman, 2017) is a forceful reimagining of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy. Ahead of securing a distributor, the film is being pre-released to sample audiences, and we were fortunate to attend a screening at the York International Shakespeare Festival (20 May 2017). The film was also shown at the Courthouse Hotel, London (15 June), and at the Gdansk Shakespeare Festival (30 July 2017).
Most distinctive about Monkman’s Macbeth is the virtual landscape in which the action unfolds. Shot against a green screen, with backgrounds, details and effects added in later, the film is purposefully anti-natural, inviting in viewers of a digital age well used to the creation of online environments. True to the tempo of online worlds, the film proceeds at an exhilarating pace. The camera roves impulsively and fluidly, matching its movement with swiftly articulated iambic pentameter. It swings around a sumptuously designed set, a ‘Scotland’ visualized as a revolving ‘other’ world (a kind of Shakespearean ‘Death Star’ or globe-shaped castle/fort adrift in the void). This is very much not the ‘Scotland’ of the ‘blasted heath’ variety and inherited representations; instead, an audience is presented with a universe in which outside and inside are delightfully blurred (is the moon inside or outside Macbeth’s room or both?) and in which ‘nothing is but what is not’.
Inside this setting, the camera is free to snake down, explore and sweep above as it glides uncannily through walls and alights on particular characters inhabiting the revolving world’s multiple layers. A wonderful example is when the probing camera circles and curves, spotlighting the murder of Macduff’s wife and children, only to shoot heavenwards and settle on the scene of the controlling Macbeth sitting at his desk. Such filming decisions place the audience in an intriguing spatial relationship with the Shakespearean text. Aided by the smooth enactment of the camera’s journeys, they also help us to appreciate how events unfold simultaneously. Whether it is an erotic meeting in the bedroom, or a visceral encounter on the battlefield, viewers are constantly alerted to actions that overlap and intermingle. Time, as this Macbeth conceives of it, is thrillingly, if unsettlingly, compressed and compacted. The effect is to suggest a beautiful moving work of art, a painting the artist is still in the throes of painting, an evolving composition characterised by ever changing landscapes and bodies. Computer graphics assist in the process of making the whole edgy and modern even as they also allude to conventional Renaissance aesthetics.
Contemporary reference points are achieved via an alluring amalgam of part-futuristic, part early-modern detailing. Whatever the period invoked, Monkman’s Macbeth retains an ability to be resolutely relevant. Hence, this Macbeth can invoke with impunity both Game of Thrones and ‘War on Terror’ vocabularies because the dominating perspective is with the here-and-now. The contemporaneous feel is of a piece with costuming as well as with the accelerated forward-leaning thrust. Characters appear in rich leathers or velvet (tellingly, the black-feathered outfit worn by Duncan is inherited – ‘borrowed’? – later on by Macbeth), and are always sensuous and sexualized – the Cawdor scenes take place in a tavern masquerading as a brothel, and, in the powerfully post-coital episodes between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, the intense sexuality of their relationship is compellingly sketched. The play’s preoccupation with visualizing fantasy and desire is materially demonstrated in shots of endless stairwells leading upwards (to battle, to the throne room and to Duncan’s chamber), capturing the paradox on the surface and at the heart of the play. Nor does Monkman’s Macbeth shy away from the play’s signature property, blood. Green and grey hues, which tend to hold sway, are periodically engulfed by spurts of crimson, with the battle scenes conveying, through mutilated bodies, a fraught sense of masculinities in crisis. The relationship between Macbeth and Banquo is subtly drawn, and not least because its intense physicality – its restless rivalry and jockeying for dominion – stems directly from shared war-time experiences. Battle scenes are lent a particular visibility, fully delivering on the cues provided by Shakespeare’s play, and this is only to be expected in a film in which the trials and travails of the body in pain are continually in evidence. Cawdor’s jerky hanging or Macbeth’s head being delightfully dangled – these shock and impress as part of the film’s imagistic repertoire.
At the same time, the public complexion of such displays of physicalilty are offset by moments of engaging intimacy. Macbeth’s soliloquies are addressed direct to camera (the ‘Thane of Cawdor’ reflection is conducted as voiceover), meaning that, with this interpretation, the protagonist is discovered very much in terms of his personal narrative arc. We feel his pain, are witness to his tears and are given access to the emotional cost of his decisions (frequently through sustained close-ups) – a flawed hero cast accessibly. Macbeth experiences his environment subjectively and psychologically in a way that is vitally energized by the CGI-enabled production. Audience involvement is encouraged through self-conscious insertions. In the background, a projectionist/the porter runs a silent film adaptation of Macbeth (the 1909 Mario Caserini version) which, as well as allowing the witches (accommodated, as befits their status, in the darkest recesses of the revolving world) a foretaste of upcoming events, recalls how often this play in particular has been lent cinematic treatment. The self-consciousness is doubly generative. At once, it ingeniously puts into play Shakespearean expression, such as ‘Put on their instruments’, prompting us to identify this in-film projector, like the film’s external camera, as another representational ‘instrument’. At a deeper level, self-consciousness raises questions about how meaning is predetermined by film/theatre traditions or made ‘in the instant’ by actors and viewers. Who controls the multi-dimensional globe? The layers of self-conscious visual reference – from medieval tapestry to Renaissance paintings and early film – give an ominous new density to Lady Macbeth’s dismissive comments, ‘the sleeping and the dead / Are but as pictures’ and ‘’tis but the painting of your fear’, again anchoring the film’s investment in Shakespearean metaphor. But Monkman’s Macbeth is no slave either to periodicity or to its cinematic forbears. Rather, the emphasis is continually on the novel and the freshly-minted: the film abounds in original readings. Duncan is fascinatingly cast, his relative youth and masculinity working against the grain of the venerable monarch stereotype; Fleance sits on the edge of the world, contemplating his future; and the hired murderers hesitate, a gust of conscience interrupting their resolve. Here is a Shakespeare for and of the moment, an archetypal story repurposed for the present and invigorated by creative flourishes.
The ending, when it comes, brings us up short. Macbeth walks out of a sea of corpses, lurching to camera; for a moment, he appears triumphant. The ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow’ soliloquy is wrenched from its earlier point in the play and centred here instead, as if the protagonist is taking the opportunity to reflect on hard won glories. But, abruptly, Macbeth is beheaded from behind, and falls to the ground; whether murder or self-slaughter, we are left to judge. Like so much else in this film, the final scene is an arresting instance of an inspiring and originally conceived interpretation. Should Macbeth be given the distribution it so richly deserves, a globally appreciative audience can be anticipated; with an eye to invention, and with its finger on the pulse of what is important, the film is a timely and deeply compelling intervention in the screen history of Shakespeare.
30th June 2017
The BSA is proud to have sponsored the Living and Dying Well in the Early Modern World conference at the University of Exeter on 15th and 16th June 2017. The following report is by Bailey Sincox, a PhD student at Harvard University.
A postgraduate conference on death in the time of Shakespeare may not be everyone’s idea of a good time. But for the fifty-five postgraduate students who gathered at the University of Exeter last week, it was not only a highly enjoyable two days – it was also an invaluable opportunity to share ideas with fellow emerging scholars.
The keynotes from Drs Lucy Munro (King’s College London) and Amy Louise Erickson (University of Cambridge) set the tone: Dr Munro spoke about death’s paper trail (wills, indentures, etc.) in the life and work of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Dr Erickson uncovered the story of Esther Sleepe, mother of the author Fanny Burney, who supported her family through her profitable fan-making business. These talks explored the ways that an early modern person’s life, labor, and legacy in death were shaped by their gender, religion, and culture; these themes provided the framework for discussion in and around the postgraduate presentations that followed.
Panel topics ranged from the “real” practice of the ars moriendi to staged representations of death, from the funerary monuments of closeted Catholics to the pastoral elegies that commemorated public heroes. Stand-out presenters on death in drama included Rachel Fennell (University of Durham), who discussed the “undead heroine” in The Winter’s Tale, Pericles, and Cymbeline, Harry R. McCarthy (University of Exeter) whose practice-based research recreated boy actors’ staging of “dragging by the hair,” and Mel Harrison (King’s College, London) who argued that femininity and disability are intertwined in plays like Titus Andronicus and Taming of the Shrew.
Engaged, illuminating dialogue characterized our panel sessions, coffee breaks, and conference dinner. Though born of a conference on death, the relationships and intellectual work begun at Exeter this past week will undoubtedly live on – much to the benefit of our scholarly futures.
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