The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance is a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on Shakespeare and performance studies by an international team of leading scholars. It contains chapters on the key methods and questions surrounding the performance event, the audience, and the archive – the primary sources on which performance studies draws. It identifies the recurring trends and fruitful lines of inquiry that are generating the most urgent work in the field, but also contextualises these within the histories and methods on which researchers build.
A central section of research-focused essays offers case studies of present areas of enquiry, from new approaches to space, bodies and language to work on the technologies of remediation and original practices, from consideration of fandoms and the cultural capital invested in Shakespeare and his contemporaries to political and ethical interventions in performance practice. A distinctive feature of the volume is a curated section focusing on practitioners, in which leading directors, writers, actors, producers, and other theatre professionals comment on Shakespeare in performance and what they see as the key areas, challenges and provocations for researchers to explore.
In addition, the Handbook contains various sections that provide non-specialists with practical help: an A-Z of key terms and concepts, a guide to research methods and problems, a chronology of major publications and events, an introduction to resources for study of the field, and a substantial annotated bibliography.
The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance is a reference work aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars and libraries, a guide to beginning or developing research in the field, and an essential companion for all those interested in Shakespeare and performance.
List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Series Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Peter Kirwan (University of Nottingham, UK) and Kathryn Prince (University of Ottawa, Canada) Part 1: Research Methods and Problems 1.1 The Archive: Show Reporting Shakespeare Rob Conkie (La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia) 1.2 The Audience: Receiving and Remaking Experience Margaret Jane Kidnie (University of Western Ontario, Canada) 1.3 The Event: Festival Shakespeare Paul Prescott (University of Warwick, UK) Part 2: Current Research and Issues 2.1 Original Practices: Old Ways and New Directions Sarah Dustagheer (University of Kent, UK) 2.2 Space: Locus and Platea in Modern Shakespearean Performance Stephen Purcell (University of Warwick, UK) 2.3 Economics: Shakespeare Performing Cities Susan Bennett (University of Calgary, Canada) 2.4 Networks: Researching Global Shakespeare Sonia Massai (King's College London, UK) 2.5 Global Mediations: Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Global and Digital Cultures Alexa Alice Joubin (George Washington University, USA) 2.6 Canon: Framing Not-Shakespeare Performance Eoin Price (Swansea University, UK) 2.7 Pedagogy: Decolonizing Shakespeare on Stage Andrew James Hartley (UNC Charlotte, USA), Kaja Dunn (UNC Charlotte, USA) and Christopher Berry (Black Theatre Network & Black Arts Institute) 2.8 Ethics: Practising Diversity at the Stratford Festival of Canada: Shakespeare, Performance and Ethics in the Twenty-First Century Erin Julian (University of Roehampton London/King's College London, UK) and Kim Solga (Western University, Canada) 2.9 Bodies: Gender, Race, Ability and the Shakespearean Stage Roberta Barker (Dalhousie University, Canada) 2.10 Technology: The Desire Called Cinema: Materiality, Biopolitics, and Post-Anthropocentric Feminism in Julie Taymor’s The Tempest Courtney Lehmann (University of the Pacific, USA) Part 3: New Directions in Shakespeare and Performance Curated by C. K. Ash (Independent researcher) and Nora J. Williams (University of Essex, UK) 3.1 Anne G. Morgan 3.2 Jatinder Verma 3.3 Judith Greenwood 3.4 Dan Bray and Colleen MacIsaac 3.5 Migdalia Cruz 3.6 Lisa Wolpe 3.7 Julia Nish-Lapidus and James Wallis 3.8 Ravi Jain 3.9 Emma Whipday 3.10 Wole Oguntokun 3.11 Vishal Bhardwaj 3.12 Adam Cunis 3.13 James Loehlin 3.14 Denice Hicks 3.15 @Shakespeare 3.16 Jung-ung Yang Part 4: Resources for Researchers 4.1 A Fifty-Year History of Performance Criticism James C. Bulman (Allegheny College, USA) 4.2 A-Z of Key Terms Bríd Phillips (University of Western Australia, Australia), with Peter Kirwan (University of Nottingham, UK) and Kathryn Prince (University of Ottawa, Canada) 4.3 Annotated Bibliography Karin Brown (University of Birmingham, UK), Peter Kirwan (University of Nottingham, UK) and Kathryn Prince (University of Ottawa, Canada) 4.4 Resources Peter Kirwan (University of Nottingham, UK) and Kathryn Prince (University of Ottawa, Canada) Index
Peter Kirwan is Associate Professor of Early Modern Drama at the University of Nottingham, UK. His books include Shakespeare and the Idea of Apocrypha (2015) and the co-edited collections Shakespeare and the Digital World (with Christie Carson, 2014) and Canonising Shakespeare: Stationers and the Book Trade, 1640-1740 (with Emma Depledge, 2017). He is Performance Reviews Editor for Shakespeare Bulletin, Book Reviews Editor for Early Theatre and Editions Reviewer for Shakespeare Survey. Kathryn Prince is Vice Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Ottawa, Canada, as well as the General Editor of Shakespeare Bulletin. Her recent books include Performing Early Modern Drama Today (with Pascale Aebischer, 2012), History, Memory, Performance (with David Dean and Yana Meerzon, 2014), and Shakespeare and Canada: Remembrance of Ourselves (with Irena Makaryk, 2016).
Reviews for The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance
A major new volume in Shakespeare studies … this research handbook is truly triumphant: Kirwan and Prince have produced an indispensable volume for researchers at all levels. * Shakespeare Survey * Brilliantly executed, consistently illuminating and abundantly engaging, this is an indispensable, one-stop discussion of Shakespeare and contemporary performance. Whether it is film, digital video or theatre, performance is explored in its multiple manifestations, and via content characterised by global reach and density. Attentive to mediation and reception, and featuring interviews with creatives and practitioners, The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance is a rich and revealing achievement. * Mark Thornton Burnett, Professor of Renaissance Studies, Queen's University Belfast, UK * In focusing on performance as a process that begins well before the proverbial curtain rises and continues long after it falls, this vibrant, politically engaged, and globally oriented collection offers readers an account of Shakespeare in contemporary performance that is at once authoritative and interrogative, comprehensive and open-ended. By foregrounding the different kinds of labour involved in the creation, reception, and history of performance, it creates a space where we can hear a more diverse range of voices talk about what Shakespearean performance means – and why it matters today – than has often been the case. * Erin Sullivan, Senior Lecturer at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK * This collection makes for an invigorating read as it injects critical energy into established debates and stretches the edges of the field just that little bit further. Contributors offer committed and thoughtful explorations of anti-racist pedagogies, ethics and cultural competence in the rehearsal room, and the structural changes organisations have to undergo in order to for them to be actively inclusive. Through thoughtful scholarship, interviews with a diverse selection of practitioners, and a range of research resources including an annotated bibliography and tour-de-force mapping of the entire field, this Handbook models what progressive Shakespeare performance studies may achieve in the coming decade. -- Pascale Aebischer, University of Exeter, UK
