Performing Early Modern Drama Today

Pascale Aebischer, Kathryn Prince

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780521193351
• eBook ISBN:
  9781139785549
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

While much attention has been devoted to performances of Shakespeare's plays today, little has been focused on modern productions of the plays of his contemporaries, such as Marlowe, Webster and Jonson. Performing Early Modern Drama Today offers an overview of early modern performance, featuring chapters by academics, teachers and practitioners, incorporating a variety of approaches. The book examines modern performances in both Britain and America and includes interviews with influential directors, close analysis of particular stage and screen adaptations and detailed appendices of professional and amateur productions. Chapters examine intellectual and practical opportunities to analyse what is at stake when the plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries are performed by ours. Whether experimenting with original performance practices or contemporary theatrical and cinematic ones, productions of early modern drama offer an inspiring, sometimes unusual, always interesting perspective on the plays they interpret for modern audiences.

Table of contents

• PERFORMING EARLY MODERN DRAMA TODAY
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Note on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• CHAPTER 1 Introduction
• CHAPTER 2 The early modern repertory and the performance of Shakespeare’s contemporaries today
• CHAPTER 3 The seeds of time: student theatre and the drama of Shakespeare's Contemporaries
• CHAPTER 4 The performance of early modern drama at Shakespeare's Globe
• CHAPTER 5 Shakespeare's contemporaries at the Royal Shakespeare Company
• CHAPTER 6 The Actors’ Renaissance Season at the Blackfriars Playhouse
• CHAPTER 7 Dido, Queen of Carthage: site-specific Marlowe
• CHAPTER 8 ‘A freshly creepy reality’: Jacobean tragedy and realist acting on the contemporary stage
• CHAPTER 9 Early modern drama on screen
• CHAPTER 10 Letting the dead come out to dance: an embodied and spatial approach to teaching early modern drama
• APPENDIX 1 Professional productions of early modern drama in the UK and USA, 1960–2010
• APPENDIX 2 Performances of early modern drama at academic institutions since 1909
• APPENDIX 3 Performances of early modern plays by amateur and student groups since 1887
• Select bibliography
• Index