Teaching Shakespeare 17 available
21st June 2019
Issue 17 (Spring 2019) of Teaching Shakespeare is now available to download. Back issues are also available.
Promoting the study, practice
and enjoyment of Shakespeare.
Promoting the study, practice
and enjoyment of Shakespeare.
21st June 2019
Issue 17 (Spring 2019) of Teaching Shakespeare is now available to download. Back issues are also available.
17th June 2019
The agenda for the 2019 AGM, to be held Friday 19 July 2019, 17:30 to 18:30, in the Talesin Create Mall Room at Swansea University, is now available.
The minutes of the 2018 AGM are also now available for consultation.
17th June 2019
The Board of Trustees of the British Shakespeare Association wishes to appoint three new Trustees to take up positions on the Board in Autumn 2019. We are looking for members of the BSA who are willing to give of their time to further the aims of the BSA, and with interests and expertise in the areas of (1) theatre and performance, (2) website and communications management, and (3) financial management.
Trustees of the BSA are required to attend three meetings of the Board of Trustees per year and the Association’s AGM in person or by videoconferencing
As a Trustee, you will share responsibility for helping the Board meet its charitable objectives. The BSA is a charitable company limited by guarantee and all Trustees share a responsibility to ensure that the BSA is managed well. For more information on the roles and responsibilities of a Trustee, please read the documents published by the Charity Commission here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-essential-trustee-what-you-need-to-know-cc3. To make sure you are eligible to become a Trustee, please check the criteria on the Charity Commission website: https://www.gov.uk/government/get-involved/take-part/help-run-a-charity
As a member of the Board, you will gain
The Board is in the process of setting up a Performance and Media Sub-Committee to better represent the interests of the theatrical community within the BSA. We seek to appoint a new Trustee who will work with existing BSA members who are interested in being on the Committee and to act as its Chair, informing the Board of the current interests and matters of concern amongst theatre practitioners of all types (performers, designers, directors, company managers) and TV), from individuals to larger-scale companies, and across media (live performance, touring, radio, tv and film).
Nominations: If you wish to nominate yourself for this role, please submit a 300 word (max) statement that outlines your interest in the role and your professional experience/affiliation by email to the BSA’s Chair, Alison Findlay, a.g.findlay@lancaster.ac.uk, by 1 August 2019.
We seek to appoint a Trustee to assist Dr Brett Greatley-Hirsch, our Web and Communications Officer. Having recently invested in a newly-updated website running on WordPress, coordinated with a new mailing list on MailChimp and facilities for BSA conference and events registration. The persona appointed will assist Dr Greatly-Hirsch to maintain the very successful running of these current systems and will help in the development of new areas of virtual communication with members, including videoconferencing.
Nominations: If you wish to nominate yourself for this role, please submit a 300 word (max) statement that outlines your interest in the role and your professional experience/affiliation by email to the BSA’s Chair, Alison Findlay, a.g.findlay@lancaster.ac.uk, by 1 August 2019.
Our current Treasurer, Professor Marion Wynne-Davies, will be stepping down in order to convene the 2020 BSA Conference at the University of Surrey so the Board wishes to appoint a new Treasurer to work alongside the Deputy Treasurer (Dr Elizabeth Glyn) from Autumn 2019. For full details of the role and how the duties are divided between Treasurer and Deputy, please email the BSA’s Chair, Alison Findlay, a.g.findlay@lancaster.ac.uk.
Applications: Letters of application, accompanied by a Curriculum Vitae should be submitted by email to the BSA’s Chair, Alison Findlay, a.g.findlay@lancaster.ac.uk, by 1 August 2019.
5th June 2019
It is with great pleasure that we announce that our new Honorary Fellow for 2019 is Emeritus Professor John Drakakis.
John’s past and continuing contribution to the world of Shakespearean studies is immense – he rightly holds the highest status in the field of Shakespearean scholarship. His is a life-time’s achievement of excellence.
John is Emeritus Professor of English Studies at the university of Stirling. He has also held visiting professorships at Wrexham Glyndwr University, where he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship, and at the University of Lincoln. He has published widely in the area of Shakespeare Studies and is the editor of Alternative Shakespeares, the joint editor of Gothic Shakespeares, Macbeth: A Critical Reader, and two other books of collected essays. Launching the Alternative Shakespeare series had a fundamental effect on the academic study of Shakespeare in Britain, alongside Dollimore and Sinfield’s Political Shakespeare. John’s determination to bring a range of theoretical approaches into the arena has undoubtedly changed the way all academics have reconfigured their studies; it has been the starting point for provocative and exciting critical readings for a whole generation of scholars. He is also the editor of the Arden 3 series The Merchant of Venice, and Q1 Richard III. He has contributed essays, and articles and book reviews to a number of leading literary journals, and he is a member of the editorial boards of Textual Practice, Critical Survey, Sederi, Intercultural Shakespeare and The Anachronist, and he was on the founding editorial board of Shakespeare. He was a founding trustee of the British Shakespeare Association and was chair of its Fellowships sub-committee. He is an elected member of the English Association, and a member of the Academia Europoeia, and he holds an honorary D.Litt. from the University of Clermont-Auvergne. He is currently the general editor of the Routledge New Critical Idiom series, and is the general editor and contributing editor in charge of the revision of Geofrey Bullough’s Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare.
John will be presented with his Honorary Fellowship at a special event during the 2019 BSA Conference in Swansea.
20th November 2018
William Blake, ‘Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing’ (c.1786). CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 Tate.
The music composed for David Garrick’s great Shakespeare “Jubilee” of 1769, the most talked about cultural event of the British 18th century, is currently being brought back to life in a pioneering recording by BSA member David Chandler, director of the Retrospect Opera, a small, UK-based charity which makes professional recordings of important musical theatre works from Britain’s past, roughly the period 1750-1950. Music from the Stratford Jubilee festival was subsequently embedded in Garrick’s sensationally popular musical comedy, The Jubilee, premiered the same year. Next year will of course mark the 250th anniversary of these remarkable events, and the recording release will mark that anniversary. David Chandler says: We want to create something that is at once scholarly, with appropriate supporting documentation, and musically and theatrically done to the highest level, capturing how much fun it all was. Charles Dibdin’s music is tuneful and delightful, demonstrating just how much Shakespeare had become part of popular culture. There are more details about the project here.
Although we are about 80% funded for this, we are very keen to find more supporters, and are hoping (praying!) that individual Shakespeareans who understand the enormous importance of the Garrick Jubilee and recognise the value of reviving and commemorating it will want to help us. The bulk of our funding always does come from individuals, and we have various levels of supporter, as the website explains (basically £25, £50, and £100 categories). All supporters will of course get a copy of the recording and accompanying materials, with all donations of £25 or more being listed on the website and those of £50 or more also being listed in the booklet issued with the CD. Anyone willing to help us can do so from the Donate page. As a registered charity, we can claim Gift Aid on your donation.
18th November 2018
Participants at the Performance and Media Committee consultation event, Actors Centre, London.
The British Shakespeare Association launched a new Performance and Media Committee with a consultation event on 13th October 2018. Members of the BSA were joined by 25 theatre practitioners and academics at the Actors Centre in London to discuss responses to these questions:
The day proved a wonderful opportunity to get together and share the many joys and occasional frustrations of working with Shakespeare. Involved in the day were an impressive array of directors, actors and other practitioners who spend a great deal of their time working with Shakespeare across companies and projects big and small. As part of this group we had representatives from smaller theatre companies: Butterfly, Dolphin’s Back, Fred, Lazarus, Pantaloons, Red Rose Chain, Shakes-Scene, Three Inch Fools, and Willow Globe. We began a rich, rewarding conversation together that we hope will grow to include many more practitioners sharing their skills and expertise with each other.
If you’d like to see a summary of the ideas we discussed, click here.
If you’d like to know more about our plans for developing these ideas, and how you can get involved, please join the BSA (free membership for theatre practitioners) and we’ll keep you updated.
13th November 2018
King’s Lynn Shakespeare Festival
Friday 26th to Sunday 28th April, 2019
St George’s Guildhall, King Street, King’s Lynn PE30 1HA
BSA members may be interested to attend the first King’s Lynn Shakespeare Festival. Over three days in April 2019, the works of the Bard will be celebrated in workshops, performance and discussion in the very theatre where it is thought that the great playwright himself performed in 1592.
The weekend will feature guests from stage and academia to honour Shakespeare’s connection with the town, with two guest performances by Sir Ian McKellen. It is hosted by Andrew Jarvis, one of the most respected Shakespearean actors of his generation – and BSA Trustee and Fellowships Committee Chair.
For more information and to book tickets, visit the King’s Lynn Shakespeare Festival website.
25th October 2018
Working in partnership with Birmingham City Council, Professor Ewan Fernie has won a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop a big project which would revive (1) Birmingham’s world-significant Shakespeare collection and (2) the ‘trailblazing’ spirit of its original foundation.
Professor Ewan Fernie and Adrian Lester at Library of Birmingham, studying a nineteenth-century playbill from the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library which advertises a Birmingham performance of Othello with Ira Aldridge in the title role.
The Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library was opened in 1868 as the first great Shakespeare library in the world; it remains the only internationally important Shakespeare collection owned by a public library. It holds around 100,000 items, ranging from the only First Folio bought for comprehensive (including working-class) education; to Shakespeare-related art-work by Dalí, Cocteau and Kokoschka; through materials in 93 languages from Abkhazian to Zulu, including a late-nineteenth-century edition in Braille. This splendid treasure-trove belongs to all the citizens of Birmingham. It is part of a great effort of the Library’s founder, George Dawson, to establish a ‘cultural commonwealth’ in the city where great culture would be enjoyed and, indeed, actively recreated by all.
‘Everything to Everybody’ will seek to share these riches across the diverse communities of today’s city. It seeks to recapture a forgotten association between Birmingham and the Bard. And it will work to renew in time for the 2022 Commonwealth Games a proud heritage which for a time made Birmingham the most ambitious and forward-looking city in the world.
University of Birmingham Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir David Eastwood said: “We are delighted to lead this landmark project since opening up the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library will make a real contribution to world culture. George Dawson was a pioneering figure, an inspiration for our founder Joseph Chamberlain in establishing the University of Birmingham as England’s first civic university in 1900.”
Birmingham City Council leader Cllr Ian Ward commented: “Thanks to this great opportunity from the Heritage Lottery Fund, we’re developing an extensive programme of community-led activities which will help people of all ages and backgrounds rediscover Birmingham’s Shakespeare Library and reinvent it for the future.”
The Project’s Patron, Birmingham-born, renowned classical actor Adrian Lester OBE, Honorary Fellow of the BSA, remarked: “Everything to Everybody is a great rallying cry for a more democratic culture and for Birmingham as the forgotten trailblazer of that important and inspiring dream.”
You can hear Ewan Fernie talking about George Dawson here: https://historywm.com/podcasts/meet-birminghams-lost-philosopher-george-dawson-1821-1876
25th September 2018
The British Shakespeare Association endows two Honorary Fellowships each year. This year, 2018, the Fellowship was given solely to Roger Harcourt – for his outstanding work and lifetime’s achievement in the field of Shakespearean education. The fellowship was endowed at a special Fellowship Event during our Conference at Queens University, Belfast.
For 2019, the BSA wishes to revert to the usual practise of endowing two Honorary Fellowships – and the BSA now needs to be thinking about who those recipients will be. These Honorary Fellowships will be endowed at next year’s Annual Conference – to be held at the University of Swansea.
I 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, a major contribution to the field of Shakespeare activities, whether it be Scholarship, Education more generally, or the Performance of the plays. This contribution should fall into the category of demonstrating a lifetime’s achievement of excellence.”
I would urge Members to adhere rigorously to this criterion and to be vigilant in resisting current issues of celebrity and temporary apparent significance. Such criteria can indeed be positively unhelpful. It is certainly permitted for Members to individually take soundings within the wider field of Shakespeare activities, but on the understanding that enquiries will need to be tactfully made, that information should remain strictly confidential, and that no candidate should be approached individually.
All proposals, from whichever area, should then be accompanied by TWO nominations (a Proposer and a Seconder) along with a formal written proposal by the Proposer stating the case for nomination (a short paragraph of not less than 200 words and not more than 500 words).
Once all Nominations have been received, the Fellowship Committee will then make a decision – via discussion and vote – on who the two candidates shall be. Those two names will then be presented and recommended to a meeting of the full Board of Trustees – a process which then requires the Board’s ratification.
Previous recipients of the Fellowships over the past few years have been : Cicely Berry, Stanley Wells, John Joughin, Reginald Foakes, Terence Hawkes, John Russell Brown, Janet Suzman, Chris Grace, Adrian Lester, Sarah Stanton, Emeritus Professor Ann Thompson and John Barton.
I really would welcome as many names as possible, from all the constituencies of the BSA. If I may repeat myself – the fact that a person is ‘well known’ should not necessarily be a factor. For example the contribution and achievement of Roger Harcourt – last year’s recipient and a private, relatively unknown figure, is just as significant as that made by one of the recipients of the year before: the much more ‘well known’ John Barton. So please – excellence of achievement is the key factor – in whatever field.
The closing date for Nominations is 10 December 2018.
Please send all nominations to the Chair of the Fellowship Committee – Andrew Jarvis – via email to jarvis-andrew@hotmail.com.
With many thanks in anticipation to you all,
Andrew
2nd July 2018
Our newest honorary fellow, Roger Harcourt, has kindly agreed to the publication of the acceptance speech he delivered during the Belfast conference dinner.
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