Shakespeare Resources

This unique study investigates the ways in which the staging convention of direct address - talking to the audience - can construct selfhood, for Shakespeare's characters. By focusing specifically on the relationship between performer and audience, Talking to the Audience examines what happens when the audience are in the presence of a dramatic figure who knows they are there. It is a book concerned with theatrical illusion; with the pleasures and disturbances of seeing 'characters' produced in the moment of performance. Through analysis of contemporary productions Talking to the Audience serves to demonstrate how the study of recent performance helps us to understand both Shakespeare's cultural moment and our own. Its exploration of how theory and practice can inform each other make this essential reading for all those studying Shakespeare in either a literary or theatrical context.

A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance provides a state-of-the-art engagement with the rapidly developing field of Shakespeare performance studies. Redraws the boundaries of Shakespeare performance studies. Considers performance in a range of media, including in print, in the classroom, in the theatre, in film, on television and video, in multimedia and digital forms. Introduces important terms and contemporary areas of enquiry in Shakespeare and performance. Raises questions about the dynamic interplay between Shakespearean writing and the practices of contemporary performance and performance studies. Written by an international group of major scholars, teachers, and professional theatre makers.

This collection of essays brings a range of contemporary critical perspectives to bear upon the practical questions of performing Shakespeare. It offers an overview of the productive interplay between cultural materialism, theatre semiotics, feminism, deconstruction and performance criticism. Among the issues considerd are: textual indeterminancy and the contingencies of performance; the implications of gender, race and class for audience response; reading the actor's body as a site of cultural inscription and post-colonial strategies for performing the hegemonic Shakespeare.

This lively and provocative study offers a radical reappraisal of a century of Shakespearean theatre. Topics addressed include modernist Shakespearean performance's relation with psychoanalysis, the hidden gender dynamics of the open stage movement, and the appropriation of Shakespeare himself as a dramatic fiction and theatrical icon.

Inspired by new approaches in performance studies, theatre history, research in material culture and dress history, a rich discussion of the many aspects of costume in Shakespearean performance has begun. Shakespeare and Costume furthers this research, bringing together varied and stimulating essays by leading scholars that consider costume from literary, dramatic, design, performative and theatrical perspectives, as well as interviews with renowned theatre practitioners Jane Greenwood and Robert Morgan. The volume amply demonstrates how an analysis of the meaning of costume enriches our understanding of Shakespeare's plays. Beginning with an overview of the stage history of Shakespeare and costume, the volume looks at the historical context of clothing in the plays, considering topics such as royal self-fashioning, festive livery practices, and conceptions of race and gender exhibited in clothing choice, as well as costume in performance. Drawing on documentary evidence in designers' renderings, illustrations in periodicals, paintings, photographs, newspaper reviews and actors' memoirs, the volume also explores costume designs in specific Shakespeare productions from the re-opening of the London theatres in 1660 to the present day.