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Henry VI, Part One Open Rehearsal Project (RSC): 17 June 2021 rehearsals (online)
The RSC has been cautious about its reopening in summer 2021. Where other theatres are beginning to tentatively let socially distanced crowds back into their buildings, the RSC has committed instead to a different kind of programme and a different kind of co-presence. The upcoming The Comedy of Errors will make use of the theatre’s unique location,…
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Ellen Terry’s Very ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ @ Queen’s University Belfast
The most delightful part of academic conferences is always* the moment when academics get up to put on their own play. Liz Schafer’s contribution to the (now annual) British Shakespeare Association conference was her adaptation of Ellen Terry’s three-scene cut of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Terry’s playlet was a self-created vehicle for her own star turn as…
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Propelling Edward III (Propeller) @ Wimbledon College of Arts
I was privileged this weekend to take part in an experimental two-day event at Wimbledon College of Arts with Propeller, a company on whom I’ve been working for some time (as well as providing talks for at Nottingham Theatre Royal). The event was designed as a collaborative venture between practice and research as part of the beginnings…
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In the Footsteps of Hamlet @ Kronborg Slot, Helsingor
Heaven forfend that I should go on holiday without having some light Shakespeare connection. However, even a normal person visiting Denmark would be the poorer for skipping Kronborg Slot in Helsingor – the Elsinore of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It’s a stunning, beautifully situated castle, its cannons facing Sweden across the narrowest part of the straits dividing the two.…
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Richard III (Silents Now) @ York Theatre Royal
Regular readers may be interested to know that I manage the Twitter hashtag #shaxfilm, an open online extension of my third year specialist module on Screen Shakespeares. The first film we study on this module is Frank Benson’s 1911 Richard III, filmed at the (then) Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon with a fixed camera, preserving Benson’s highly gestural…
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Smock Alley Theatre, 1662, Dublin
Unbelievably, people forgot that Smock Alley Theatre was there. One of the three theatres (and the only one outside of London) given royal warrant after the restoration of Charles II, Smock Alley is one of the most important theatres in Western Europe. Modelled on the new style theatres in the French tradition, it ran continuously until 1787…
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Candlemas Revels @ Middle Temple Hall
As part of a quite wonderful conference this weekend, I went to Candlemas Revels at Middle Temple Hall on Saturday night. The preceding two-day conference, convened by Jackie Watson and Darren Royston, focused on the Elizabethan and Jacobean context of the Inns of Court in relation to the legal and social culture of early modern London, its influence…
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Shakespeare: Staging the World @ The British Museum
One of the most high-profile projects in which I’ve had a minor involvement this year has been the BP-sponsored exhibition Shakespeare: Staging the World at the British Museum, curated by Dora Thornton and my PhD supervisor, Jonathan Bate. While my own involvement extended merely to checking the quotations used in the exhibition catalogue, it gave me a great deal of time…
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Isles of Wonder @ The London 2012 Olympic Stadium, via the BBC
There’s so much been written on the London 2012 Opening Ceremony that I certainly don’t feel the need to talk at length about the event. Suffice to say, I thought it was a bold and wonderful opening, celebratory while keeping its tongue at least partly in its cheek, self-deprecating and triumphant. The Bond/Queen and Bean sections were…
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The Memorable Masque @ The Shakespeare Institute
The annual British Graduate Shakespeare Conference pleasingly put performance at the centre of this year’s plenary events. As well as a taster by the Institute’s performance research group for their upcoming Macbeth, we were treated to a staged reading of George Chapman’s The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, first performed to celebrate the wedding of…
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Dr Peter Kirwan 