Wrestling Resurgence, @RobBrazierPhoto To book, please click here. Before Shakespeare and Engendering the Stage are delighted to announce our next performance workshop, focusing on combat as entertainment—in both Shakespeare’s time and today. Combat, acrobatics and feats of strength were everywhere in the early modern period: wrestling happened on the streets, in the countryside and in plays … Continue reading Ruff Play with Shakespeare: combat, gender and entertainment
[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
We're very pleased to present a guest post by Derek Dunne on a fascinating event at the Blackfriars... *** Do you know who the best writer of Elizabethan London was? Not the most prolific, or the most poetic, or the most popular, but simply the best writer. This is a contentious question among scholars, but … Continue reading The Man with the Golden Pen
Give ear, I pray you, and mark it attentively, for you shall hear the tenor of a strange and tragical comedy. Anthony Munday, Zelauto (1580) Genre: what is it, what does it mean, and how does it organise our experiences in the theatre, in a book or in our scholarship? These are questions about stories, … Continue reading Generic excitement
Social media has reacted with frustration and resentment at the news this week that one of London’s most famous nightclubs, Fabric, has had its licence revoked (#fabricreview). While I will avoid being overtly political, here, the closure of the nightclub inevitably prompts questions over responsibility for regulating such venues, the legitimacy of closing a popular … Continue reading “Specially youthe”: Regulating London “Venues”
"When in Toledo there I studied, It was my chance to write a tragedy - See here my lords - [He shows them a book] Which long forgot, I found this other day. Now would your lordships favour me so much As but to grace me with your acting it - I mean each one … Continue reading Before Shakespeare in Performance
…and now for something completely different. After last week’s performance workshops, this post moves us from the rehearsal space back to the library; I have been revisiting archival documents associated with the rise of the commercial playhouses and getting a clearer sense of the context that surrounds extant references, restrictions, and correspondence about playing. The … Continue reading Early Thoughts on the Archives
This month, in the wake of the Brexit vote, Adrian Chiles travelled around the country to speak to those—particularly those at one remove from London—who voted Leave. Whatever one’s political leanings and whatever one made of the Panorama programme itself, Chiles sought to bring “News from the Midlands,” representing the views of those underrepresented, infuriated with … Continue reading News from the North
We invite scholars to participate in exploring John Lyly’s Galatea at the Jerwood Space this August. The award-winning theatre maker Emma Frankland and Andy Kesson will be working with a company of performers, exploring the play’s representations of non-normative sexuality and its concluding investment in transgender identity. We are grateful to Shakespeare Bulletin, the University of Roehampton and the Before Shakespeare project … Continue reading Galatea Workshops
Recently, I was lucky enough to attend the Before Shakespeare project’s first Advisory Board meeting. The above question, posed by Dr Andy Kesson, provides a good example of the project’s opening strategy. The board was keen to interrogate long-accepted terminology from the early modern studies toolbox, sometimes with disorientating effects (on this observer, at least) … Continue reading “What is a house?”
