BSA Small Grants Fund: Events Reports
8th February 2026
The BSA’s Small Grants Fund supports a wide variety of projects. Two recipients of BSA’s SGF share reports about events that were partially funded by the scheme below.
Revels Office: New Voices in Early Modern Material Culture, Theatre, and Performance
On Friday 13th June, the Revels Office Research Network, in collaboration with the Society of Antiquaries, held the ‘Revels Office: New Voices in Early Modern Material Culture, Theatre, and Performance’ conference at Burlington House. This hybrid event celebrated the work of early career scholars working on early modern material culture, theatre, and performance in Great Britain and Ireland (1500-1800).
The day encompassed rich reflections on matter and its meaning both inside and outside the playhouse. Papers investigated topics including cosmetics and race-making, costume, the senses, and performances of gender, power, and identity. The panel “Bibliographic Interests: Texts of and in Performance,” which was generously supported by the Bibliographical Society, was a particular highlight, with papers exploring the diary of Philip Henslowe, the early modern cue system, and the career of the printer John Danter. Professor Catherine Richardson FSA gave a fascinating keynote on her new book ‘Shakespeare’s Objects: Engaging the Off-Stage Lives of Early Modern Props’, in which she argued that a sustained engagement with the materiality of objects, the nature of props, and stage practice has a profound impact on the way in which we understand issues of identity and lived experience in the early modern period.
We hosted 45 in-person attendees, with 70 delegates participating online. Feedback from the day was enthusiastic, with attendees praising the ‘fabulous range of speakers’ who covered ‘a great spread of topics’. As an online network founded during the pandemic, this day was a special opportunity for the international Revels Office community to come together to share and celebrate research past, present, and future. The Revels Office would like to thank the British Shakespeare Association for their generous support of the conference.
By Bethan Davies
Shakespeare and the Politics of Subtitling
On 27 October 2024 ‘Shakespeare and the Politics of Subtitling’, a BSA Small Grants-funded event, took place at SOAS. The event brought together three Indian Shakespeares scholars: Dr Anandi Rao (SOAS) who works on Shakespeare and translation, and Drs N. P. Ashley (St Stephen’s College, U of Delhi) and Thea Buckley (QUB), who have both worked on the English subtitles of Kannaki, the film under discussion. An adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra, Kannaki is a 2002 Indian National Award-winning Malayalam-language tragedy written by Sanjeev Kilikulam and directed by Jayaraj R. Nair, who also participated online at this event as Guest Speaker.
‘Shakespeare and the Politics of Subtitling’ was attended by students, alumni, academics from UK and international universities, translators, and practitioners. The event was convened by Dr Anandi Rao, Lecturer in South Asian Studies at SOAS, University of London. Two academics had worked on the subtitles — NP Ashley, who recently translated The Comedy of Errors into Malayalam as part of his Kerala Shakespeares project, discussed drafting the first iteration of subtitles in an era before AI or auto translations and e-dictionaries. Dr Thea Buckley, who works on Indian Shakespeare in film, performance and translation, and is currently co-editing a special Shakespeare journal issue on Indian cinema, worked on the second draft of the subtitles and embedded these into selected clips from the film Kannaki.
The first part of the session involved a live audience Q&A with director Jayaraj, who appeared online from Kerala and explained the symbolism, narrated filming anecdotes and answered audience questions. Questions ranged from ‘Why Shakespeare?’ to how the lyrics, tunes, language(s) and linguistic setting of the film were chosen. The borders of India’s Southern states were decided after independence along linguistic boundaries. Thus, politics is automatically embedded in acts of choice of script, accent, metaphor, and dialogue in the case of this movie, set on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border.
Next, N. P. Ashley and Thea Buckley discussed selected scenes from the film and the related challenges involved in subtitling these, from fitting lines onto a single row of onscreen text, and how to handle slang and words with double meanings, to whether to translate for literal sense or to privilege rhythm, metaphor or rhyme? Who is the subtitle for? Which audience? What acts of subalternity inhere? Who is included or excluded? Where does Shakespeare fit in and how is his work translated and re-translated in the act of scripting and Subtitling? Were some of the questions addressed.
The event concluded with screening more songs and scenes from the film, followed by discussing further reading and further directions of scholarship.
By Thea Buckley
Application for the SGF
BSA members in good standing are eligible to apply for up to £500 to support a wide range of activities. The next round of applications will close on 30th March. More details are available here: https://www.britishshakespeare.ws/bsa-small-grants-fund/