Applications are due Monday, 8 August, for a workshop designed for researchers and teachers of recorded and broadcast Shakespeare. This might be an excellent time to remind prospective applicants to consult with you about their application statements BEFORE they submit their materials.

Shakespeare and Performance Studies: Researching and Teaching Recorded and Live Broadcast Theatre (virtual fall workshop)

Organized by Peter Holland, with Pascale Aebischer and Erin Sullivan

Over the last few years, two events have probably irrevocably changed the ways in which we watch live theatre. The first has been the development of live broadcast theatre as a synchronous cinema screening, as a time-shifted version to allow for viewers in different time-zones, and as an “encore” broadcast, and then, increasingly, as a recording available for streaming, non-cinema viewings. The second event has been the Covid-19 pandemic, with its creation of “live” Zoom performances, new experiences for spectating communities, and increased access to archived recordings. Productions of Shakespeare have been exceptionally dominant in these transformational processes, sometimes outnumbering the rest of such output combined. The phenomena have already had enormous consequences for the teaching of Shakespeare in and through performance and for the forms of scholarship investigating this change, with a flood of studies appearing at unprecedented speed. Two interrelated virtual workshops will explore this material and scholarly interactions with it, first for its potential for future research and second for pedagogic possibilities and applications.

Organizers: Peter Holland is the McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare Studies in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame—and that makes him, as far as he knows, the holder of the only named chair in Shakespeare in the world not permanently assigned to an English department. His research focuses on Shakespeare in performance, especially Shakespeare on many kinds of screens. He is the author of Shakespeare and Forgetting (Arden Bloomsbury, 2021) and editor of Shakespeare, Memory and Performance (Cambridge, 2006). Pascale Aebischer is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Studies at the University of Exeter. She has a background in Shakespeare performance studies and is an expert in present-day performance cultures and digital technologies, including motion capture, live streams and Zoom performance. She is co-editor of Shakespeare and the ‘Live’ Theatre Broadcast Experience (Arden Bloomsbury, 2018) and author of Shakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance (Cambridge, 2020) and Viral Shakespeare: Performance in the Time of Pandemic (Cambridge, 2021). Erin Sullivan is Reader in Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, where she leads its distance learning MA programme. Her current research focuses on the impact of digital technology on Shakespearean performance, including theatre broadcasts and livestreams. She is the co-editor of Lockdown Shakespeare: New Evolutions in Performance and Adaptation (Arden Bloomsbury, 2022) and author of Shakespeare and Digital Performance in Practice (Palgrave, forthcoming).

Anticipated Schedule: Friday morning and Saturday morning, 30 September and 1 October 2022. Drama Online will provide the plays under discussion gratis to all admitted participants.

 Apply: 8 August 2022 for admission.

 Questions? Send them to owilliams@folger.edu

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