Abstract:This essay explores the relationship between Irish Shakespeare performance, gendered bodies, and theatrical convention, using Druid Theatre Company’s 2015 production DruidShakespeare as a case study. Using Shonagh Hill’s theories of women’s embodied mythmaking in Irish theater, I show how the performances and gendering of Derbhle Crotty and Aisling O’Sullivan as Henry IV and Henry V respectively can be read within (following Hill) a broader genealogy of creative female corporeality. I do so through exploring Crotty’s performance of undress, nudity, and femininity as Henry IV, before demonstrating how O’Sullivan’s anti-heroic Henry V negotiated the histories and iconographies of Irish and Shakespeare performance. Ultimately, I argue that this corporeal exploration of gender and history was integral to DruidShakespeare’s political project, and integral to its desire to adapt and represent Shakespeare meaningfully for and to Irish audiences.
{"title":"Writing (Irish) Histories on the Body: DruidShakespeare, Gender, and the Shakespearean History Play","authors":"Emer McHugh","doi":"10.1353/shb.2022.0049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2022.0049","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay explores the relationship between Irish Shakespeare performance, gendered bodies, and theatrical convention, using Druid Theatre Company’s 2015 production DruidShakespeare as a case study. Using Shonagh Hill’s theories of women’s embodied mythmaking in Irish theater, I show how the performances and gendering of Derbhle Crotty and Aisling O’Sullivan as Henry IV and Henry V respectively can be read within (following Hill) a broader genealogy of creative female corporeality. I do so through exploring Crotty’s performance of undress, nudity, and femininity as Henry IV, before demonstrating how O’Sullivan’s anti-heroic Henry V negotiated the histories and iconographies of Irish and Shakespeare performance. Ultimately, I argue that this corporeal exploration of gender and history was integral to DruidShakespeare’s political project, and integral to its desire to adapt and represent Shakespeare meaningfully for and to Irish audiences.","PeriodicalId":304234,"journal":{"name":"Shakespeare Bulletin","volume":"93 Pt A 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133767213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520–1620 by Callan Davies (review)","authors":"Elizabeth Tavares","doi":"10.1353/shb.2022.0058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2022.0058","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":304234,"journal":{"name":"Shakespeare Bulletin","volume":"2017 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122475282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fat Ham (review)","authors":"Shanelle E. Kim","doi":"10.1353/shb.2022.0051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2022.0051","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":304234,"journal":{"name":"Shakespeare Bulletin","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130154243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In The Renaissance of Lesbianism (2002), Valerie Traub calls readers to imagine “a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Titania’s complex and implicitly colonialist affections for her votaress are not minimized but explicitly motivate her resistance to Oberon,” a production that “gives temporary life to Titania’s beloved votaress” (76). About a decade later, in Julie Taymor’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theatre for a New Audience (2013), the Indian votaress entered as a soft yellow light when Titania spoke the words: “His mother was a votaress of my order” (2.1.123). This light illuminated Titania’s face against the “progeny of evils” born of her marital strife, and softened the sounds of storm and thunder that accompanied Oberon onstage. Taymor’s production might not have made the colonialist intimacy between the Indian votaress and Titania as explicit as Traub imagined, but this particular staging of the Indian votaress’s affective force in Shakespeare’s play deviated from the production history of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which the pregnant Indian votaress is rarely represented, although her son often appears onstage. In this chapter, I put the Indian votaress’s ghost—this light—in conversation with contemporary performance and critical race theorists, to argue that Taymor’s interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream underscored the Indian votaress’s potential to offer audiences more than a vision of racist, European colonization. In the ominous world that Shakespeare and Taymor construct, the brightest light is the Indian votaress.
{"title":"Giving “Airy Nothings” Shape: Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream","authors":"A. Andrzejewski","doi":"10.1353/shb.2022.0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2022.0032","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In The Renaissance of Lesbianism (2002), Valerie Traub calls readers to imagine “a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Titania’s complex and implicitly colonialist affections for her votaress are not minimized but explicitly motivate her resistance to Oberon,” a production that “gives temporary life to Titania’s beloved votaress” (76). About a decade later, in Julie Taymor’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theatre for a New Audience (2013), the Indian votaress entered as a soft yellow light when Titania spoke the words: “His mother was a votaress of my order” (2.1.123). This light illuminated Titania’s face against the “progeny of evils” born of her marital strife, and softened the sounds of storm and thunder that accompanied Oberon onstage. Taymor’s production might not have made the colonialist intimacy between the Indian votaress and Titania as explicit as Traub imagined, but this particular staging of the Indian votaress’s affective force in Shakespeare’s play deviated from the production history of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which the pregnant Indian votaress is rarely represented, although her son often appears onstage. In this chapter, I put the Indian votaress’s ghost—this light—in conversation with contemporary performance and critical race theorists, to argue that Taymor’s interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream underscored the Indian votaress’s potential to offer audiences more than a vision of racist, European colonization. In the ominous world that Shakespeare and Taymor construct, the brightest light is the Indian votaress.","PeriodicalId":304234,"journal":{"name":"Shakespeare Bulletin","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126472123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Puck famously concludes A Midsummer Night’s Dream by suggesting that the players’ utmost goal has been to avoid offending their audience and offering to “mend” any damage the play might have caused (Epilogue 8). While superficially conciliatory, Puck’s final speech reminds the audience, yet again, of Dream’s many offenses and harms, and challenges theater practitioners to navigate the darker, more unsettling aspects of the play-text. Taking its cue from Puck, our introduction to this special issue on Dream in modern performance outlines the key inequities and disharmonies of the play-text that might be taken up in performance, including problems of consent, misogyny, colonialism, inequity, and ecological disaster. In the second half of the introduction, we offer a brief survey of how some of these issues have been addressed—magnified, mitigated, or erased—in the play’s staging history from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Finally, we conclude by briefly summarizing how the essays in this special issue explore the mixed results of theatrical projects around the world that employ the play as a tool for social critique and/or imagining alternative futures.
{"title":"Confronting the Past, Dreaming the Future: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Modern Performance","authors":"Sarah Crover, Natalia Khomenko","doi":"10.1353/shb.2022.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2022.0031","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Puck famously concludes A Midsummer Night’s Dream by suggesting that the players’ utmost goal has been to avoid offending their audience and offering to “mend” any damage the play might have caused (Epilogue 8). While superficially conciliatory, Puck’s final speech reminds the audience, yet again, of Dream’s many offenses and harms, and challenges theater practitioners to navigate the darker, more unsettling aspects of the play-text. Taking its cue from Puck, our introduction to this special issue on Dream in modern performance outlines the key inequities and disharmonies of the play-text that might be taken up in performance, including problems of consent, misogyny, colonialism, inequity, and ecological disaster. In the second half of the introduction, we offer a brief survey of how some of these issues have been addressed—magnified, mitigated, or erased—in the play’s staging history from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Finally, we conclude by briefly summarizing how the essays in this special issue explore the mixed results of theatrical projects around the world that employ the play as a tool for social critique and/or imagining alternative futures.","PeriodicalId":304234,"journal":{"name":"Shakespeare Bulletin","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134144950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:When New Zealand-based production company The Candle Wasters adapted A Midsummer Night’s Dream, they broke from the patterns established by their previous web series. Instead of vlog-based narratives covering several months, Bright Summer Night is a study of a party lasting one night, depicted in ten episodes, each following a single character. As characters fixate on the personal joys and fears of friendships and romances, they are also preoccupied with the grief and stress of living during a growing global environmental catastrophe. The party setting of Bright Summer Night utilizes the carnivalesque party setting as a transformative green world, substituting substance abuse for Cupid’s flower and the pressures of the contemporary youth experience for the oppressive laws of Athens. Rather than playing the intoxicated revelries of the partygoers for laughs, however, Bright Summer Night uses the setting to open dialogues about environmentalism (including the eco-anxiety of Millennials and Gen Z), sexuality, non-binary gender expression, relationship toxicity, and emotional expression. Resisting the neat problem-resolution of other adaptations such as Get Over It and A Midsummer Night’s Rave, Bright Summer Night rewrites Shakespeare’s lines and plot points to demonstrate that not every offense can be mended. The series also functions as a meta-commentary on using artistic expression to call attention to social and ethical issues. Drawing on ecocriticism, adaptation theory, and youth studies, this article explores how Shakespeare can be used by young people as social commentary in the digital age.
{"title":"All is Mended? Activism and Eco-Anxiety in Bright Summer Night","authors":"Jennifer M Flaherty","doi":"10.1353/shb.2022.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2022.0033","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:When New Zealand-based production company The Candle Wasters adapted A Midsummer Night’s Dream, they broke from the patterns established by their previous web series. Instead of vlog-based narratives covering several months, Bright Summer Night is a study of a party lasting one night, depicted in ten episodes, each following a single character. As characters fixate on the personal joys and fears of friendships and romances, they are also preoccupied with the grief and stress of living during a growing global environmental catastrophe. The party setting of Bright Summer Night utilizes the carnivalesque party setting as a transformative green world, substituting substance abuse for Cupid’s flower and the pressures of the contemporary youth experience for the oppressive laws of Athens. Rather than playing the intoxicated revelries of the partygoers for laughs, however, Bright Summer Night uses the setting to open dialogues about environmentalism (including the eco-anxiety of Millennials and Gen Z), sexuality, non-binary gender expression, relationship toxicity, and emotional expression. Resisting the neat problem-resolution of other adaptations such as Get Over It and A Midsummer Night’s Rave, Bright Summer Night rewrites Shakespeare’s lines and plot points to demonstrate that not every offense can be mended. The series also functions as a meta-commentary on using artistic expression to call attention to social and ethical issues. Drawing on ecocriticism, adaptation theory, and youth studies, this article explores how Shakespeare can be used by young people as social commentary in the digital age.","PeriodicalId":304234,"journal":{"name":"Shakespeare Bulletin","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115470542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：