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 … Continue reading The Woman in the Moon: In Conversation with Edward’s Boys
The Woman in the Moon
Women in the Moons
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 … Continue reading Women in the Moons
“Fly me to the moon!”
Edward's Boys' Director, Perry Mills, introduces their latest production, in collaboration with Before Shakespeare, John Lyly's The Woman in the Moon. To read about Edward's Boys in rehearsal at our conference in August 2017, read Perry's companion piece on our site. Now that Autumn and even Winter have been and gone – although Back-Winter appears to … Continue reading “Fly me to the moon!”
The Woman in the Moon: Interviews with the Cast
During rehearsals for James Wallace’s The Dolphin’s Back production of John Lyly’s The Woman in the Moon (Shakespeare's Globe, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse) back in August 2017, we had time to catch up with a few of the cast members and ask them how it felt to play gods, Nature, men, and women on the Sam Wanamaker stage … Continue reading The Woman in the Moon: Interviews with the Cast
Venus’s Palaces
She’s got it, Yeah baby, she’s got it ---Shocking Blue For 1570s and 1580s theatregoers, love was all around. One of the defining characteristics of the earliest surviving commercial plays is the predominance of the character Venus or her allegorical equivalent, Love. “Theaters and curtaines Venus pallaces,” reads a marginal note in Philip Stubbes’s The … Continue reading Venus’s Palaces
The Woman in the Moon onstage
John Lyly was the foremost literary figure during a period that saw the first permanent commercial theatres built in London. As Shakespeare's best-selling and most famous literary contemporary, it is crazy to think that the 2017 Dolphin's Back production in the Wanamaker will be the first time Lyly has appeared in a UK professional playhouse … Continue reading The Woman in the Moon onstage
Before Conference (and The Woman in the Moon)
Our conference is coming up later this month, and we’re looking forward to the range and diversity of papers, conversations, and performance work that will be descending upon South West London in what we’re all confident will be a rare weekend of British Bank Holiday sun. This short post reflects on some of the issues … Continue reading Before Conference (and The Woman in the Moon)
