Online Book Launch: Innovation and Digital Theatremaking
26th January 2024
Please use this form to register for the event, which will take place at 6:00pm (GMT), Friday 23rd February.
Promoting the study, practice
and enjoyment of Shakespeare.
Promoting the study, practice
and enjoyment of Shakespeare.
26th January 2024
Please use this form to register for the event, which will take place at 6:00pm (GMT), Friday 23rd February.
20th December 2023
The BSA is delighted to announce that the winner of the 2023 BSA Innovation Award is Robert Myles. The Innovation Award was launched in 2022 to celebrate innovative creative work of an individual or organisation involved in Shakespearean studies, performance, and/or the cultural and creative industries. The winner will have substantially innovated our engagement with and appreciation of the dramatist and his works.
During lockdown, Robert Myles assembled a diverse community of creatives to perform all of Shakespeare’s plays, dubbed The Show Must Go Online, helping to set the agenda for online digital Shakespeare. Central to his practice is a sense of the need for actors to embody and ‘own’ Shakespeare’s words to convey meaning. What makes Rob’s approach unique is his detailed understanding of the nuances of Shakespeare’s language. An attentiveness to text is central to his creative practice: his insights offer novel approaches that challenge orthodoxies in Shakespeare performance, asking us to return to the plays afresh.
His sensitivity to ways of using digital platforms to engage new audiences and his commitment to embedding EDI into everything he does is exemplary. Rob’s work on The Show Must Go Online has had lasting impact as evidenced by citation in Shakespearean scholarship. This year, the Stratford Festival (Ontario, Canada) launched Illuminated Text on its Stratfest@Home platform to enhance its education provision. Developed by Rob, Illuminated Text combines street art, animation and contemporary music to form an interactive experience that introduces new audiences to Shakespeare. Users self-guide, engaging with four key aspects of Shakespeare’s writing: rhythm, rhetoric, sound, and imagery. The session concludes with a virtual workshop with street artist and calligrapher Alice Mazzilli where participants are invited to create a visual interpretation of their own piece of text.
With funding from Theatre Royal Bath, Rob is also exploring how performers can interact across geographically distinct spaces in live performance, marrying the flexibility of online digital theatre with the experience of site-specific performance. Rob has always been an innovator, always attracted to new ways of making Shakespeare more accessible and Illuminated Text is a brilliant way to bring Shakespeare to all, produced in a professional, clever and engrossing way that will appeal to Shakespeare aficionados and novices alike. His ongoing projects (including a podcast with leading actors) show a continued commitment to innovative practice, diversity and inclusion, and to bringing Shakespeare to new audiences.
Photo credit: cursetheseeyes.
11th December 2023
‘Shakespeare’s Writing Lives’ commemorating the 20th anniversary of the BSA’S journal, Shakespeare, 26-28 June 2024, De Montfort University, Leicester.
Commemorating 20 years of the journal, Shakespeare, this conference will be held where the journal began and will anticipate a diverse range of papers on the topic of Shakespeare’s Writing Lives which includes but is not limited to Shakespeare’s, his company’s and collaborator’s biographies, Shakespeare’s biographers, Shakespeare as biographer (encompassing his representation of historical figures), adaptations of Shakespeare’s characters, the ‘authentic’ Shakespeare and authenticating Shakespeare, candidates for the Dark Lady, playing William Shakespeare, fictional biographies (Hamnet on page and stage), and Shakespeare’s biographical legacies.
Submissions are now open for precirculated seminar papers and presentations to be delivered as part of panels.
To enrol in a seminar OR submit an abstract for consideration as part of a paper panel, please log in to your BSA account and fill out the form in the ‘BSA 2024’ folder on your member’s dashboard: https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/log-in/
Seminar enrolment and submission of abstracts will remain open until 29th February 2024.
Please submit a title and a 200-word abstract via the online form. The maximum number of speakers per panel will be 4.
Seminars involve writing a short paper for pre-circulation within the seminar group, with the expectation that seminar participants offer feedback to one another and meet for in-person discussion during the conference. The maximum number of participants per seminar is 12. Please use the online form on your member’s dashboard to make your seminar selection and submit a 200-word abstract via the form on your member’s dashboard.
The seminar sessions on offer at the BSA 2024 conference are:
(1) Authenticating Shakespeare – What did Shakespeare Really Write? (Convenors: Gabriel Egan, De Montfort University and Brett Greatley-Hirsh, University of Leeds)
Recent studies have claimed that plays not previously included in the canon are at least in part by Shakespeare, including Arden of Faversham, The Spanish Tragedy, and Double Falsehood, and that plays long attributed to Shakespeare alone include others’ writings, including all three ‘Henry 6’ plays and ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’. How can we tell what is by Shakespeare and what is not? What difference do these determinations make for activities centred on named authors, including this meeting of the ‘British Shakespeare Association’? Contributors to this seminar are invited to describe new methods for attributing authorship, the application of existing methods to new cases, and reflect on actual or projected consequences of the changing consensus about what is and is not by Shakespeare.
(2) Shakespeare and Europe – The Writer and His Continent (Convenor: José Pérez Diez, University of Leeds)
Shakespeare was deeply steeped in a common European literary and cultural heritage that crossed the boundaries of nations, states, and sectarian religious divides. His engagement with classical Latin and Greek sources, as well as his knowledge of the developing themes and literary traditions of the other vernacular languages of the continent, are well attested. Conversely, his influence on the literature and culture of Europe since his death in 1616 has been all-pervading, and continues to grow today. This seminar investigates Shakespeare in and from a European context, both in his indebtedness to Renaissance European influences in his own time and historical context, and in his preeminent place in European culture across the centuries. Papers produced for this seminar may tackle any aspect related to Shakespeare’s work and legacy in European culture.
(3) Picturing Shakespeare (Convenor: Deborah Cartmell, De Montfort University)
Despite Ben Jonson entreaty to readers to ‘look / Not on his picture, but his book’, interest in the picture of Shakespeare has never gone away. The seminar will explore why, since the first appearance of Martin Droeshout’s engraving of Shakespeare, Jonson’s advice has been ignored. Papers are invited on visual representations of Shakespeare which could include Shakespeare portraits, Shakespeare branding, and Shakespeare’s visual representation, in painting, sculpture, theatre, film, television and other media. Topics we might explore are the persistence of Shakespeare’s image in popular culture, changing representations of Shakespeare, from ghostly professor to Hollywood heartthrob, global visualisations of Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s visual signifiers (the quill, the ruff, the signature) and the authenticating power of Shakespeare’s image.
It is hoped that papers in this seminar will include images.
(4) Shakespeare’s Players – Their Lives and Legacies (Convenors: Siobhan Keenan, De Montfort University and Tom Rutter, University of Sheffield)
Informed by the flourishing of early modern repertory and acting company studies, recent times have seen a growing recognition of, and interest in, the ways in which actors and acting companies collaborated with, and helped to shape, the plays written by Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the early modern period. Similarly, inspired by the emergence of ‘star’ theory and the rise of performance history, there is now a significant and growing body of work exploring the role of ‘Shakespearean’ actors in shaping the subsequent performance and reception of Shakespeare’s plays on stage and screen. This seminar aims to bring the latest work in these fields into conversation, by inviting colleagues to reflect afresh on the lives and legacies of Shakespeare’s players, past and present, as well as performers of early modern drama more generally, and how they have shaped our understanding and the reception of Shakespeare and the drama of his time across the globe.
This could include papers exploring (but not limited to): the relationship between Shakespeare / Shakespeare’s plays and individual actors and/or acting companies in his own day (such as the Lord Chamberlain’s / King’s Men); leading Shakespearean actors and/or Shakespeare-focused theatre companies of subsequent eras; studies of current Shakespearean actors / Shakespeare-focused companies (such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Globe Theatre); Global Shakespeare players; players in Shakespeare adaptations; Shakespearean casting practices (including in relation to matters such as gender, race, and disability); Shakespeare/Shakespearean actors on film and television; the concept and cultural value associated with being recognised as a ‘Shakespearean’ actor; the representation of Shakespearean actors and / or their lives in bio-fiction on the page or screen. Contributors are also welcome to address these topics as they relate to non-Shakespearean dramatists, actors and companies, and to the performance afterlives of other early modern playwrights.
(5) Shakespeare’s Fictional Afterlives (Convenor: Michael Davies, University of Liverpool)
Adaptations, alterations, imitations, continuations, offshoots, feed-offs, transformations, translations, transmutations, transculturations, revisions and re-visionings, versions, reconstitutions… As Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier acknowledge, there may well be ‘no right name’ for it, yet the rewriting of Shakespeare remains a major cultural phenomenon and a booming literary industry. In light of the ‘Hogarth Shakespeare’ series, commissioning major international authors over the last decade to ‘retell’ Shakespeare’s most well-known works, this seminar invites assessments and evaluations of contemporary prose fiction that reimagines Shakespeare’s plays, plots, characters (perhaps even Sonnets) in new ways for their readers. Avoiding adaptations for children (in the ‘Tales from Shakespeare’ tradition) contributors may focus on individual novels, short fiction, or collections of short stories. Alternatively, participants could consider and debate broader questions. How do writers and readers today navigate transitions in form, genre, and style from Shakespearean verse drama to prose fiction; from romance to realism; from the early modern to the postmodern? Is this retelling (and retailing) of Shakespeare creatively enabling or debilitating? What constitutes a ‘successful’ rewriting of Shakespeare? Is a canon of Shakespeare fiction emerging, and if so, on what basis? And has the phenomenon of Shakespeare retold (and resold) reached exhaustion? What might the future hold after Smiley, Updike, McEwan, Atwood, Sinclair…?
(6) The Parallel Lives of Stock Characters, or The Shakespearean Multiverse (Convenor: Miranda Fay Thomas, Trinity College, Dublin)
This seminar considers what happens when we re-locate familiar characters in new or unexpected places. European Renaissance drama was highly familiar with the idea of stock characters, a practice which enabled instant recognition of archetypes by audiences and allowed actors to prepare for roles faster in the limited time afforded by the repertory system. If all writing is re-writing, what changes when we think of these stock characters in new plays as having another shot at life, further opportunities to succeed, or to fail better? While Marvin Carlson’s notion of ‘haunting’ is a mainstay in contemporary theatre studies, we can also apply the idea of how actors and the characters they embody facilitate remembrance of (fictional) lives past during the early modern period. Once we move away from the naïve belief that all of Shakespeare’s characters are individuals, how might we re-conceive this act of theatrical recycling in ways that evoke new possibilities? How have ‘stock’ Shakespearean lives – his heroes, his lovers, his vice figures, and more – been relocated in different times, places, and genres? This seminar invites papers that engage with these central questions and welcomes approaches including (but not limited to) performance and theatre history, original practices, adaptation, global Shakespeares, audience studies, and fan studies.
(7) Shakespeare’s Community (Convenor: Geoffrey Marsh, former Head of Performance Department, Victoria and Albert Museum)
Shakespeare was a Londoner in his professional life — a resident, a tax-payer, a theatre owner – and also a commuter to his place of origin, Stratford-upon-Avon. The more we learn about Shakespeare’s professional life the more we find him living and working within particular communities that seem to have shaped his creations and his living habits. We now know that he worked closely with other theatre professionals not only in running the country’s most successful theatre company but also in composing its plays. We know where Shakespeare lived in London for much of his career and it seems that the people he lived around productively influenced his invention of unforgettable characters and situations. This seminar is concerned with what we know about the various residential and professional communities that Shakespeare lived and worked in, and the degree to which our knowledge of them should affect our understanding of his plays and poems.
(8) Shakespeare’s Lives in Performance (Convenor: Ollie Jones, University of York)
This seminar invites consideration of Shakespeare’s lives – both those of his characters and of Shakespeare as a character himself – in performance, on stage and screen. We invite papers which take as a central focus a key Shakespeare character, a Shakespearean actor (past or present) or Shakespeare himself as a fictional character.
Papers might address:
(9) Lives of Shakespeare’s Contemporaries (Convenor: Lisa Hopkins, Professor Emerita, Sheffield Hallam University)
Topics could include (but are not limited to) the lives and careers of any of the contemporary dramatists (or other theatre professionals such as actors) whose lives and careers intersected with Shakespeare’s; contemporary and later representations of such lives; potential sources of biographical information; and the question of whether we know less or more about Shakespeare than we might expect.
(10) Shakespeare’s Historical Biographies (Convenor: Alison Findlay)
‘There is a history in all man’s lives / Figuring the nature of the times deceased / The which observed, a man may prophesy / With a near aim, the chance of things / As yet not come to life’ pronounces Warwick (2 Henry IV, 3.1.75-9). Shakespearean historical biography looks backwards and forwards simultaneously, as figured in Tudor rewritings of Richard III, the exhumation and royal reburial of Richard’s skeleton in Leicester, and Philippa Langley’s most recent quest to prove the escape of the Princes from the Tower. Norman Rabkin argues that Shakespeare’s historical biography looks both ways ideologically as well, using Gombrich’s rabbit-duck illusion to reveal a Janus-faced quality in Henry V, which ‘points in two opposite directions, virtually daring us to choose one of the two opposed interpretations it requires of us.’ This seminar invites papers which discuss the numerous ways in which Shakespeare shapes historical biographies in any of the following broad areas.
(11) Defining Shakespeare (Convenor: Anna Blackwell, University of Nottingham)
Scholarly efforts to define the figure of the ‘Shakespearean’ actor have focused on their perceived influence upon their industry; the extent to which they have, in Peter Holland and Adrian Poole’s words, shaped the ‘interpretation, understanding and reception of Shakespeare’ (2013, vii); and hardest of all to quantify, a certain ineffable greatness. And yet culture also abounds with Shakespeareans and Shakespeares who are anything but skilled — a phenomenon has existed for as long as there has been the potential for ‘good’ Shakespeareanism’. Consider, for example, the excruciatingly bad actor Mr Wopsle in Great Expectations, Alan Rickman’s frustrated thespian-turned science fiction star in Galaxy Quest (‘How did I come to this? I played Richard III. There were five curtain calls’), or David Mitchell’s loser dad in Upstart Crow.
Taking these actors as our cue, the seminar aims to examine not only the mechanisms which define and assign Shakespearean greatness (and the converse), but to explore alternative Shakespearean legacies, performers, and modes of performance. Topics we might explore include (but are not limited to): failure; casting practices; accessibility; biographical accounts of Shakespearean actors and directors; fictional depictions of Shakespeare and Shakespeareanism; depictions of acting; adaptation; ‘incomplete dramaturgies’ (Williams 2022). Our focus is on contemporary Shakespearean performance, but submissions which explore historical precedents are also welcome.
If you encounter any technical difficulties or have any questions about the online submission / enrolment form, please contact the BSA’s Web Officer, Kat Hipkiss or Web Deputy, Andrea Smith.
If you have general query about the conference, please contact the Conference Team.
Featured image courtesy of the RSC.
30th October 2023
We are delighted to announce the details of the 2024 British Shakespeare Association conference:
Conference Theme
Shakespeare’s Writing Lives, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the BSA’s journal, Shakespeare
Location
De Montfort University (DMU), Leicester
Date
26th – 28th June 2024
Organisers
Deborah Cartmell (DMU)
Gabriel Egan (DMU)
Siobhan Keenan (DMU)
Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam)
Pete Smith (Nottingham Trent)
The organisers will be supported by the BSA’s Conference Team (José Pérez Díez, Maria Shmygol, Coen Heijes, Miranda Fay Thomas, Kat Hipkiss and Andrea Smith).
Overview
Commemorating 20 years of the journal, Shakespeare, this conference will be held where the journal began and will anticipate a diverse range of papers on the topic of Shakespeare’s Writing Lives which includes but is not limited to Shakespeare’s, his company’s and collaborator’s biographies, Shakespeare’s biographers, Shakespeare as biographer (encompassing his representation of historical figures), adaptations of Shakespeare’s characters, the ‘authentic’ Shakespeare and authenticating Shakespeare, candidates for the Dark Lady, playing William Shakespeare, fictional biographies (Hamnet on page and stage), and Shakespeare’s biographical legacies.
A call for papers will be published on our ‘conference’ page and circulated via the BSA Bulletin in due course.
8th August 2023
Professor Carla Della Gatta shares with us her work on Latinx Shakespeares, including how the research towards her recent monograph has helped her to build a wide-ranging open-access archive and resources page at LatinxShakespeares.Org, of interest to BSA members for their researching and teaching.
The growth of Global Shakespeares over the last two decades has expanded the knowledges of theatrical traditions across the world and the cultural, political, linguistic, and economic histories that inform them. My research is an investment in what I have referred to as the diversified local, focusing on a minority population as means to both understand the work of Latinx theatre-makers and to rewrite the history of American Shakespeares so that it includes the over seventy-five years of contributions of Latinx artists and cultures to American Shakespearean performance.
Latinx Shakespeares are Shakespearean productions and adaptations that are made Latinx through dramaturgy, textual adaptation, casting practices, and/or backstage processes. Latinx Shakespeares: Staging US Intracultural Theater (University of Michigan Press, 2023, open-access),draws a theatre history, one with stops and starts and theatrical traditions with surprisingly long arcs. These works range from culturally-appropriative musical theatre with Puerto Rican characters such as West Side Story (Broadway, 1957) to engagements with Cuban religious practices—both Catholic and Indigenous African—such as Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (Asolo Repertory, 2012) to immigration narratives about border crossings between Mexico and the US, such as La Comedia of Errors (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 2019). The trajectory reveals no direct through line from white artists taking up Latinidad to Latinx artists taking up Shakespeare, but as more Latinx theatre-makers became involved in these productions, the range of dramaturgical practices and nuanced depictions of Latinx expanded.
Latinx Legibility Onstage and Off
There are no Latinx characters or settings in Shakespeare, as the ethnic category of Latino was coming into formation during Shakespeare’s time. According to the US government, there are four races: Black/African American, white/Caucasian, Indigenous/Native American, and Asian. Hispanic/Latino is an official ethnicity—only as of the 1980 Census—and can be of any race.[1] Latinx is the gender non-binary term for Latino, the peoples who live in the United States who are a product of, or descended from, Spanish colonization. These are homogenizing and problematic categories for identity, and my use of them in Latinx Shakespeares (and here in this blog) pushes on those limitations.[2]
One of the challenges in historicizing the role of Latinx peoples is in the recognition of Latinx. For example, in the long-running production of Othello with African American actor Paul Robeson in the titular role, Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer played Iago (Broadway, 1943). None of the reviewers of Ferrer’s performance ascribed the stereotypes or tropes that often get applied to Latinx actors today, that they are ‘fiery,’ ‘hot’, etc., as the ethnic category of Hispanic (later Latino) had not yet fully gained traction. Although audiences knew that Ferrer was Puerto Rican, the combination of his racial whiteness and a lack of a recognized official ethnic category both contributed to a lack of recognition of his identity.
More than seventy-five years later, Latinx Shakespearean productions address such issues of Latinx legibility, including colorism and anti-Blackness within Latinx communities. In Alex Alpharaoh’s 2019 O-Dogg: An Angeleno Take on ‘Othello’, the action is set during the six days of the 1992 LA uprisings that followed the acquittal of white police officers who had beaten a Black man. Alpharaoh rewrites Othello to Afro-Latinx, Iago as Indigenous Latinx, the Emilia character as white-passing Latinx, and the Desdemona character as Korean-American. The adaptation simultaneously maps the historical interracial violence throughout the city of Los Angeles and the intra-ethnic biases that play out within Latinx communities on personal level.
One of the ways that Latinx characters are made legible is often through an emphasis on the aural. Nearly all Latinx Shakespeares include some Spanish to signal Latinidad, whereas with each passing decade, Latinx theatre includes less and less Spanish. Because Latinx are absent from Shakespeare’s canon and visually racially-diverse, theatre-makers embellish the aural through language, accents, music, and the larger soundscape. What I term a Latinx acoustemology for Shakespeare is this aural excess, or auralidad, that is invited through the openness of Shakespeare’s language and invites the nuances of identity that lead to a reformulation of Latinx as an identity category.[3]
Latinx Shakespeares as Methodology
Integral to writing a theatre history, especially one of adaptation, is the ‘both/and’ of creative/critical practice. As a scholar-practitioner, I draw on the knowledge of artists and understand and advocate for creative work as an act of criticism, and throughout Latinx Shakespeares, the output of artists that is theatre-making is on equal plane to the output of academics that is our scholarship. In so doing, this type of performance criticism takes seriously the aesthetics, processes, and creative practices of Latinx art-makers and positions itself against binarism and the divisive ‘us-them’ mentality that looks to art to explicitly engage ‘the political’.
For Shakespeare to be made Latinx, adaptations and concept productions cannot merely integrate thematic issues of the border, Latinx characters, or include Spanish. Latinx Shakespeares at their best are acts of theatrical bilanguaging, a process I describe as ‘a liberation from discrete genres of theatrical storytelling as well as Shakespearean English [that] pushes against the idea of universality to expand theater communities for a specific locality’ (p. 109). The act of theatrical bilanguaging involves an inclusion of backstage processes and performance methods and crosses dramaturgical, ethnic, and linguistic borders.[4] For example, in Chapter Four of Latinx Shakespeares, I attend to three Hamlet adaptations that take different approaches to mixing performance—ritual, ceremonial, and devised theatre practices—and theatrical practices to create space for Latinx subjectivity and interiority. Each of these productions addresses the crisis of the self that results from coloniality by crossing multiple borders, ‘linguistic and cultural, religious and ritualistic, within the play and without’ (p. 27).
Latinx Shakespeares demonstrate how early strategies of division such as the West Side Story effect—the staging of cultural difference of any kind in Shakespeare as cultural-linguistic difference—can be transposed to a bridge through theatrical bilanguaging, an act of ‘listening for commonality rather than difference’ as an ‘act of creating bridges is a look to the future for the new American theater’ (p. 174). They make the case that Shakespeare can be staged as ethnic theatre when created and staged through theatrical bilanguaging.[5]
Writing an Archive
Latinx Shakespeares examines Latinx-themed Shakespearean productions. As my research into Latinx engagement with Shakespeare began to expand backwards historically and forwards to new productions, it also expanded more widely to bilingual and semi-bilingual theatre, the Latinx artists who perform, design, and direct Shakespeare without a Latinx theme, pedagogical practices, translation practices, and Latinx ontologies for theatre-making through stories that must be adapted to embrace our cultures. As a result, I co-edited with Trevor Boffone Shakespeare and Latinidad (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), a collection of essays and interviews with twenty-five contributors that extends the breadth of possibilities of engaging Shakespeare for Latinx cultures.
I wanted to ensure that the history of the myriad intersections of Shakespeare and Latinidad is readily available and accessible to make clear Latinx contributions to American Shakespeares. Along with the open-access monograph that was published in January, I launched the first online archive of Latinx theatrical adaptation in February. LatinxShakespeares.Org goes beyond Latinx Shakespeares and intersections of Shakespeare and Latinidad to adaptations of other (white) canonical literatures including Greek and Roman plays, Spanish Golden Age dramas, and adaptations of Lorca, Chekhov, Ibsen, Molière, and more. With over twenty contributors at the outset, its launch included more than 150 Latinx Shakespeares, more than 30 bilingual and/or Latinx-authored (but not themed) Shakespearean adaptations, and nearly 100 Latinx-themed and/or authored adaptations of other western literatures.
The archive continues to grow, with more than twenty-five productions and adaptations added in the first six months. It is Phase I of a larger project of creating community through archiving theatre history. I have been in touch with over 250 theatre-makers—to gain permission to include their ephemera and photographs and to learn about their work—and I have heard from dozens more, each excited to be part of such a lengthy and creative theatrical legacy. For practitioners, the archive is a resource of contemporary dramaturgies for classical theatre, and for scholars, it is a database of strategies for engaging Shakespeare by and for an ethnic group. I would love to hear from scholars and artists how it is being used in their research, and from those who wish to contribute a performance review, drama analysis, or guest blog. Please contact me at carla[at]umd[dot]edu.
Carla Della Gatta
University of Maryland
[1] Latinx is a geographical term, based on a shared history and culture, whereas Hispanic is a language-based term for those from Spanish-language dominant countries.
[2] Shakespeare is pluralized as ‘Shakespeares’ to signal an interdisciplinary, Cultural Studies approach. The diversity of perspectives, methodologies, and subject matters is indicated in this pluralization, unlike older disciplines such as English, Literature, and Theatre.
[3] ‘Acoustemology’ is a portmanteau for ‘acoustic epistemology’ and was coined by Steven Feld. See Wes Folkerth, The Sound of Shakespeare, New York: Routledge, 2002. 106.
[4] I adapt for the theatre Walter Mignolo’s concept of languaging that is a ‘way of life between languages: a dialogical, ethic, aesthetic, and political process of social transformation’. Walter Mignolo, Local Histories / Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 265.
[5] I define ethnic theatre as a ‘for us, by us’ with examples such as the Yiddish theatre, Armenian theatre, and early Latinx theatre.
1st August 2023
The BSA’s 2023 conference on the theme of ‘Relocating Shakespeare’ took place at the University of Liverpool, 25th – 28th July.
The BSA Board of Trustees is immensely grateful to the institutional organisers and hosts of our 2023 conference, Dr Esme Miskimmin (University of Liverpool), Dr Katie Knowles (University of Liverpool), and Professor Emerita Elspeth Graham (Liverpool John Moores University), without whose tireless work the event could not have taken place.
The BSA is very grateful for the institutional support received from the University of Liverpool, and for the invaluable support that the conference also received from Liverpool John Moores University, particularly from Dr Kathryn Walchester and Dr Rebecca Bailey. We would also like to express gratitude to Dr Rachel Willie for organising the Bluecoat event (sponsored by LJMU) and including it in the programme. LJMU generously sponsored the performance by Imaginarium at Shakespeare North Playhouse and the closing plenary by Ben Crystal, as well as providing support for the LJMU conference assistants.
The successful running of the event could not have taken place without the conference assistants, whose indispensable contributions across the four-day event are greatly appreciated. Thank you to Louise Cooper, Talyn Hushon, Rebecca Shaw and James McCay from Liverpool John Moore University and to Kate O’Leary and David Rice from the University of Liverpool’s Continuing Education department.
The BSA is delighted to have held the 2023 conference at the University of Liverpool and spent one conference afternoon at the Shakespeare North Playhouse — many thanks to the events, tech, catering, and estates teams for doing such a brilliant job of looking after us!
If any BSA members are interested in serving as hosts for future BSA conferences, please get in touch via the ‘Contact Us’ form.
23rd May 2023
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
The Board of Trustees of the British Shakespeare Association wishes to appoint a new Web Deputy to further the Association’s aims to educate, promote, and foster a better understanding of Shakespeare and his work. The Web Deputy is an important position within the BSA, working closely with the Web and Communications Officer, as well as the Board of Trustees as a whole, to support the Association’s work. The Web Deputy will be a co-opted member of the Board of Trustees in the first instance, but will be required to be formally elected a Trustee of the BSA.
The position is open to any member of the BSA who possesses the necessary technical skills (see below for the specifics). Trustees work voluntarily (with reasonable expenses reimbursed when necessary) to further the aims of the BSA across its four main constituencies of members: academic researchers, teachers, theatre practitioners, creatives, and members of the public.
The British Shakespeare Association is a registered Charity and its Trustees are also Directors, and take joint responsibility to help the Board promote the Association’s objectives which are: to educate, promote, and foster a better understanding of Shakespeare and his works in a manner consistent with an educational charity limited by guarantee; and benefiting those individuals, members, charities, or institutions with an educational purpose toward the study of Shakespeare in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The British Shakespeare Association has a diverse and widespread international membership, and we warmly welcome applications from any member of the Association from any part of the world, in line with these objectives, and with its policy for diversity, inclusivity and equal opportunities. We particularly welcome applications from disabled applicants, those from BAME backgrounds, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Trustee profile and duties
Trustees are required to attend three meetings of the Board of Trustees per year, which are normally held via Zoom in January, May, and September, and to attend the Association’s Annual General Meeting (normally held in November). The BSA will meet reasonable expenses for UK travel associated with attending any BSA meetings where necessary, and accepts virtual attendance via videoconferencing. In addition, some of our Trustees also sit on sub-Committees of the Board (whose business is usually conducted virtually).
The Web Deputy will:
The BSA is a charitable company limited by guarantee and all Trustees share a responsibility as Directors to ensure that the BSA is managed well.
What are the benefits of joining the BSA Board?
You will gain:
Application process:
If you wish apply for this post, please submit a CV and a 300-word (max.) statement that outlines your interest in the role and any relevant experience. Please submit this by email to José A. Pérez Díez and Maria Shmygol, Joint Deputy Chairs of the BSA, at the BSA’s email address by Monday 26th June 2023.
The Web Deputy plays an important role on the BSA Board; appointment to this role therefore requires a short interview by a small panel of current BSA Board members. The interview will be conducted online via Zoom or Teams. The new Trustee will be expected to take up their role from July 2023, following the BSA Conference in Liverpool.
Please contact the current holder of the post, Kat Hipkiss, should you require any further information about this role.
22nd May 2023
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
The Board of Trustees of the British Shakespeare Association wishes to appoint a new Membership Officer to further the Association’s aims to educate, promote, and foster a better understanding of Shakespeare and his work. The Membership Officer is one of the senior positions in the leadership of the BSA, working closely with the Chair and Deputy Chair, the Web and Communications Officer and Deputy Officer, and the Treasurer, as well as the Board of Trustees as a whole, to support the Association’s work. The Membership Officer is also automatically a Trustee of the BSA. Unlike elected trustees, however, the Membership Officer’s period of service is not time-limited, although notionally three-year terms are encouraged.
The position is open to any member of the BSA who possesses the necessary technical skills (see below for the specifics). Trustees work voluntarily (with reasonable expenses reimbursed when necessary) to further the aims of the BSA across its four main constituencies of members: academic researchers, teachers, theatre practitioners, creatives, and members of the public.
The British Shakespeare Association is a registered Charity and its Trustees are also Directors, and take joint responsibility to help the Board promote the Association’s objectives which are: to educate, promote, and foster a better understanding of Shakespeare and his works in a manner consistent with an educational charity limited by guarantee; and benefiting those individuals, members, charities, or institutions with an educational purpose toward the study of Shakespeare in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The British Shakespeare Association has a diverse and widespread international membership, and we warmly welcome applications from any member of the Association from any part of the world, in line with these objectives, and with its policy for diversity, inclusivity and equal opportunities. We particularly welcome applications from disabled applicants, those from BAME backgrounds, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Trustee profile and duties
Trustees are required to attend three meetings of the Board of Trustees per year, which are normally held via Zoom in January, May, and September, and to attend the Association’s Annual General Meeting (normally held in November). The BSA will meet reasonable expenses for UK travel associated with attending any BSA meetings where necessary, and accepts virtual attendance via videoconferencing. In addition, some of our Trustees also sit on sub-Committees of the Board (whose business is usually conducted virtually).
The Membership Officer will:
The BSA is a charitable company limited by guarantee and all Trustees share a responsibility as Directors to ensure that the BSA is managed well.
What are the benefits of joining the BSA Board?
You will gain:
Application process:
If you wish apply for this post, please submit a CV and a 300-word (max.) statement that outlines your interest in the role and any relevant experience. Please submit this by email to José A. Pérez Díez and Maria Shmygol, Joint Deputy Chairs of the BSA, at the BSA’s email address by Monday 26th June 2023.
The role of Officer is a senior role on the BSA Board; appointment to this role therefore requires a short interview by a small panel of current BSA Board members. The new Trustee will be expected to take up their role from July 2023, following the BSA Conference in Liverpool.
Please contact the current holder of the post, José A. Pérez Díez, should you require any further information about this role.
26th April 2023
Call for contributions: “Learning from Casting”, a symposium at the University of Southampton
On the 3rd of July, 2023, the University of Southampton will host a symposium for researchers, actors, and creatives interested in examining current casting practices in Shakespeare productions in the UK. The conversation, which will cover topics such as non-traditional and conceptual casting, self-tapes, online auditions, and casting challenges presented by specific plays, will take the form of roundtable discussion, a panel bringing together distinguished Shakespearean actors working in the UK, and a session with Sam Jones CDG, who is credited with casting some of the most successful films, TV shows, and stage productions over the last couple of decades, and who will join us to discuss her experience as the Head of Casting for the RSC as well as her work with Dominic Cooke on the second season of The Hollow Crown.
While there is no need to submit a proposal for a research paper, you are welcome to express interest in participating in a roundtable discussion by sending a brief outline of your research interests in Shakespearean casting or your experience with the current casting practices in the industry to Jakub Boguszak by June 1, 2023.
24th April 2023
This roundtable was recorded on 21st April 2023 to coincide with a forthcoming special issue on the First Folio of the BSA’s Shakespeare journal.
Speakers:
Gabriel Egan (DeMontfort University)
Patricia Badir (University of British Columbia)
Chris Laoutaris (The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham)
Eric Rasmussen (University of Nevada, Reno)
Jyotsna G. Singh (Michigan State University)
See also: Chris Laoutaris Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio (William Collins)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Book-Intertwined-Lives-Behind/dp/0008238383
Paul Edmondson, Aaron Kent, Katherine Scheil, and Chris Laoutaris, Anne-thology: Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare (Broken Sleep Books)
https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/anne-thology
All the proceeds from the latter book go towards funding Shakespeare Birthplace Trust education projects.
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