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 400th 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 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. This free online exhibition constitutes the largest and most authoritative collection of primary-source materials documenting the life of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). It brings together images and descriptions of all known manuscript and print references to Shakespeare, his works, and additional references to his family, in his lifetime and shortly thereafter.
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.