Sarah Dustagheer

(Re)constructed Spaces for Early Modern Drama: Research in Practice

This special issue concerns the joining and intertwining of practice and research in early drama. Undertaking such work brings us to a complicated intersection of disciplines and traditions, concerned variously with literary analysis, performance strategies, the materiality of space, and fleeting encounters with the past, which allow us to tell the story of the medieval and early modern stage. This special issue questions the nature of the relationship between practice and research, and asks how, between the gaps and the unknowns and the contradictions of surviving evidence, as well as the temporal distance between moderns and our forebears, the act of doing and making in the present enables us to develop informed understandings of the past. The essays presented here attempt to tease out such questions. As editors we did not wish to impose a single framework for engaging in this kind of work, but rather to bring together discussions of projects that investigate common problems across a wider range of periods and geography than is often the case. Thus we hope that what follows offers readers the chance to compare similarities and differences in methodology and interpretations, and explore the kinds of questions and claims practice-as-research (hereafter PaR) can ask and make about early drama.

Intimacy at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (SWP) opened next to Shakespeare’s Globe on London’s South Bank in January 2014. The new theater is described, by the Globe, as an ‘archetype’ of a Jacobean indoor playhouse and is based on the Worcester College plans on an unknown seventeenth-century indoor playhouse. Following these designs, the SWP is a U-shaped theater, with galleries surrounding a pit of seating and a small platform stage; it is a candlelit space and holds approximately 340 people. One word has reoccurred in reviews and responses to this new theater and the Jacobean repertory performed in it: ‘intimate’. This articles examines this somewhat complex term that has been used by reviewers and theatre historians with too little or no exposition at all. Analyzing what ‘intimacy’ means at the SWP over the first two years of its use reveals much about the unique environment of the playhouse, its actor/audience dynamic and modern interpretations of the Jacobean indoor repertory. Moreover, as work on intimacy in performance has arisen from analysis of very recent theatrical trends - immersive theater experiences, site-specific productions and one-on-one performance – considering intimacy at the SWP demonstrates the distinctive place of this Jacobean archetype in the contemporary theaterscape.

Shakespeare in London

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on the Text A Chronology of Shakespeares Life and Early Modern London Introduction: Shakespeares London 1. Violence in Shakespeares London: Titus Andronicus (1594) and Tyburn 2. Politics in Shakespeares London: Richard II (1595) and Whitehall 3. Class in Shakespeares London: Romeo and Juliet (1595-6) and The Strand 4. Law in Shakespeares London: The Merchant of Venice (1596-8) and the Inns of Court 5. Religion in Shakespeares London: Hamlet (1600-1) and St Pauls 6. Medicine in Shakespeares London: King Lear (1605-6) and Bedlam 7. Economics in Shakespeares London: Timon of Athens (1607) and the Kings Bench Prison, Southwark 8. Experimentation in Shakespeares London: The Tempest (1610-11) and Lime Street Epilogue: Henry VIII (1613) and the Tower of London Works Cited Suggested Further Reading Index

Introduction: Global Shakespeare for Anglophone Audiences

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance vol. 11 (26), 2014; DOI: 10.2478/mopa-2014-0002 Reflecting on the 2012 Globe to Globe Festival, Bridget Escolme hopes that this unique project might paradoxically be the beginning of a decentring of Shakespeare in global knowledge production. What questions, she asks, might this Festival continue to provoke that arent about Shakespeare? And how might theatres and universities start to explore and answer them (309)? Escolme joins other scholars left asking questions, about Shakespeare, non-Shakespeare and performance, in reaction to an unprecedented few years of foreign productions staged for Anglophone audiences. Many of those excellent responses are collated in Shakespeare Beyond English (2013), edited by Susan Bennett and Christie Carson, and A Year of Shakespeare (2013), edited by Paul Edmondson, Paul Prescott and Erin Sullivan. This special edition of Multicultural Shakespeare is part of that response and seeks to engage with and develop the debate started by these two important books. We do this not least with a review of both books which productively places them in dialogue with one another, but also with a rich, eclectic set of articles that considers the genesis of the Globe to Globe Festival, foreign Shakespeare performance practices, the politics of translation and the ethics of reviewing such productions, amongst other things. A Year of Shakespeare offers an archive of accounts of an exceptionally wide range of theatrical experiences made available within a short space of time and originating in many different cultures (Wells xxiii). Similarly, Shakespeare Beyond English serves, according to its editors, as a scholarly archive of the Globe to Globe Festival; albeit one they hope challenge[s] the business of Shakespeare and so is a great deal more (Bennett and Carson 3). Rather than emulate these comprehensive works, this journal is not an archive but rather a diverse snapshot of scholars analysis of foreign Shakespeare in 2014, focussing on a range of performances from Globe to Globe, to the Edinburgh International Festival, to the Royal Shakespeare Complete Works Festival. Escolme wonders Lecturer in Early Modern English, University of Kent. London Shakespeare Centre, Kings College London. Sarah Dustagheer, Aleksandra Sakowska Introduction: Global Shakespeare for Anglophone Audiences 10 Sarah Dustagheer, Aleksandra Sakowska how theatres and universities might begin to explore the questions raised by foreign Shakespeare and we hope that this journal begins some of that exploratory work. Shakespeare remains a focus but, again picking up on Escolmes thoughts about questions that are not about the early modern playwright, articles here offer thoughts on contemporary Chinese, Indian and Polish theatre practices from practitioners and researchers working in these areas. The next few pages introduce the articles that follow, but also seek to identify three of the reoccurring themes that they examine: performance spaces, languages and reception. Performance Spaces For David Wiles, the play-as-event belongs to the space, and makes the space perform as much as it makes actors perform (1); the importance of space, as asserted by Wiles, is confirmed by the discussion of many foreign Shakespeare productions. The way a space performs in the sense of working both with or even against a production is pertinent for shows which are transferred across not only different theatre spaces but different countries too. For the Globe to Globe Festival, the specific performance conditions of Londons reconstructed theatre challenged many companies performing during 2012. Reviewing Andrea Baracco and Vincenzo Mannas Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) for Shakespeare Beyond English, Sonia Massai points out that the performance space offered by the Globe is not neutral and often clashes with the aesthetic and more generally artistic principles that inform the theatrical language and approach shared by some directors, including Baracco (97). …