Performing Early Modern Drama Today

Cambridge University Press, 10/11/2012
EAN 9780521193351, ISBN10: 0521193354

Hardcover, 262 pages, 23.1 x 15.4 x 2.4 cm
Language: English

While much attention has been devoted to performances of Shakespeare's plays today, little has been focused on modern productions of the plays of his contemporaries, such as Marlowe, Webster and Jonson. Performing Early Modern Drama Today offers an overview of early modern performance, featuring chapters by academics, teachers and practitioners, incorporating a variety of approaches. The book examines modern performances in both Britain and America and includes interviews with influential directors, close analysis of particular stage and screen adaptations and detailed appendices of professional and amateur productions. Chapters examine intellectual and practical opportunities to analyse what is at stake when the plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries are performed by ours. Whether experimenting with original performance practices or contemporary theatrical and cinematic ones, productions of early modern drama offer an inspiring, sometimes unusual, always interesting perspective on the plays they interpret for modern audiences.

1. Introduction Pascale Aebischer and Kathryn Prince
2. The early modern repertory and the performance of Shakespeare's contemporaries Lucy Munro
3. The seeds of time
student theatre and the drama of Shakespeare's contemporaries Jeremy Lopez
4. The performance of early modern drama at Shakespeare's Globe Farah Karim-Cooper
5. Shakespeare's contemporaries at the Royal Shakespeare Company Coen Heijes
6. The actors' renaissance season at the Blackfriars Playhouse Jacquelyn Bessell
7. Dido, Queen of Carthage
site-specific Marlowe Rebecca McCutcheon and Sarah Thom
8. 'A freshly creepy reality'
Jacobean tragedy and realist acting on the contemporary stage Roberta Barker
9. Early modern drama on screen Pascale Aebischer
10. Letting the dead come out to dance
an embodied and spatial approach to teaching early modern drama Jonathan Heron, Nicholas Monk and Paul Prescott
11. Professional productions of early modern drama, 1960–2010 Karin Brown
12. Performances of early modern drama at academic institutions since 1909 Jeremy Lopez
13. Performances of early modern plays by amateur and student groups since 1887 Jeremy Lopez.