Further to Andy’s post on story, this post asks questions about the nature and necessity of coherent “story”—and of audiences following “plot”—in early modern commercial dramatic performance. It does so by putting literary and archival material into conversation with archaeological discoveries, and as such I’m thankful to Heather Knight of MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) […]
what’s the matter? This post follows up some of the points raised by Andy in his discussion of “story” and early modern theatre as part of his Performing Words series. Here, I suggest that the term “matter” might afford a more historically nuanced—and appropriate—vocabulary for thinking about the intersection of “story,” words, and performance. the […]
It’s Friday, and we’re hurrying across London Bridge in the rain towards a part-carpeted Methodist Church in London’s Eastcheap: that Elizabethan-sounding nook somewhere loosely between Crutched Friars and Leadenhall (more Tudor echoes). We settle in to observe how woman was first created. Not Genesis 1:27 or 2:22, though. John Lyly’s Pandora. Again, sheltered from the […]
Last year I saw Dolphin’s Back’s Woman in the Moon; last night I saw Edward’s Boy’s Woman in the Moon. This is presumably the first time in history anyone has been able to see multiple Women in the Moons, and we’re very grateful to both companies for sharing their work with us on this play. It’s […]
This post is part of a series on theatrical words. For an introduction to the series, see Performing words: introduction to a new thread on theatre and language. How much do we think about stories when we read, perform, produce, watch or study early modern plays? How aware are we of the decisions being made by […]
