Callan Davies explores some work-in-progress for a paper at the Shakespeare Association of America conference next spring for the "Tudor Performance: Contexts, Traditions, Afterlives" seminar, convened by Jessica Winston. One of my favourite horror film tropes is when a beleaguered resident of an old house, stricken with fear, rushes to the local library to trawl through … Continue reading Resurrecting All Hallows and Reanimating Henry Walton
Rattling bloody facts; or, why Tamburlaine would make a rubbish boyfriend
I got to see Michael Boyd's production of Tamburlaine last night, a show that focuses as much on the plays' verse as it does on their violence. The production has the most extraordinary and urgent verse speaking I think I've ever heard: fast, fluent and often underscored by the band's rhythmical beat. This blog post is not … Continue reading Rattling bloody facts; or, why Tamburlaine would make a rubbish boyfriend
Before Shakespeare at The National Archives (The Theatre)
This post also appears on The National Archives blog. BOOK FOR OUR TALK AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, 1 AUGUST, HERE Tucked away somewhere in the temperature-controlled archival store rooms of The National Archives is an equity suit in the Court of Exchequer that records a series of trespass complaints. This suit seems unremarkable, if a little complex: … Continue reading Before Shakespeare at The National Archives (The Theatre)
The Curtain Rises: Post Match Report
On Saturday 21st, we enjoyed seeing the puffed-up knight Huanebango being struck down by a disembodied voice, entering a sixteenth-century smoking area, meeting the cosmopolitan neighbours of 1580s Shoreditch, and learning how to use a sword and buckler... Here at Before Shakespeare we’ve already hit the bar. Here is a love jug, a fear god … Continue reading The Curtain Rises: Post Match Report
PhD Studentship: Before Shakespeare
Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Roehampton, London A three-year, full-time Ph.D. studentship is available in connection with the AHRC-funded Before Shakespeare project. The project: Before Shakespearefocuses on the earliest years of the London playhouses (broadly conceived of as c. 1565-95), and investigates the literary, economic and entertainment experimentations associated with theatre-making at this … Continue reading PhD Studentship: Before Shakespeare
The Before Shakespeare Guide to [The] Theatre Etiquette
[Come and behave (well?) with these tips in mind at our upcoming event on the Curtain playhouse at hackney House on 21 July.] Just as writers in twenty-first century New York have opinions on how other people should behave in theatre spaces, so early modern London has its fair share of advice to spectators. Whether … Continue reading The Before Shakespeare Guide to [The] Theatre Etiquette
The Curtain Rises (21 July 2018)
On 21 July, we and MOLA, The Stage, and The Dolphin's Back will explore the history and future possibilities for the Curtain playhouse with a public audience at Hackney House. Tickets are available on Eventbrite. The Curtain is one of the earliest playhouses of the Elizabethan period, open by 1577, discovered in 2011, and excavated … Continue reading The Curtain Rises (21 July 2018)
Galatea, BritGrad and diverse alarums
What do we see when we look at early modern plays in contemporary theatre? Well, this is a very UK-based, and probably London-based answer, but we generally see a lot of white, able-bodied cis men in plays about white, able-bodied cis men; we generally see the same 10-15 plays of the 400 or so early … Continue reading Galatea, BritGrad and diverse alarums
Performing words #7: permanent
I'm afraid this blog post will seem especially pedantic and churlish, because it is about the unexpected embedding of a strange word in conversations about early modern theatre history: the word 'permanent'. Theatre history tends to distinguish between playhouses it considers permanent, and those it considers impermanent, despite the fact that no Elizabethan, Jacobean or … Continue reading Performing words #7: permanent
The Woman in the Moon, Edward’s Boys: Review by Leah Scragg
We are thankful to Leah Scragg for her review, here, of Edward's Boys' The Woman in the Moon (8-11 March 2018). You can read the director, Perry Mills, on the production elsewhere on our site, and we also have interviews with the cast. *** Edward’s Boys, under the direction of Perry Mills, might well be said to … Continue reading The Woman in the Moon, Edward’s Boys: Review by Leah Scragg
