Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Yukio Ninagawa and Robert Lepage to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.
Yukio Ninagawa (1935–2016) was Japan's foremost director of Shakespeare whose productions were acclaimed around the world. His work was lauded for its spectacular imagery, its inventive use of Japanese iconography and its striking fusion of Eastern and Western theatre traditions. Over a career spanning six decades, Ninagawa directed 31 of Shakespeare's plays, many of them, including Hamlet, on multiple occasions. His productions of Macbeth, The Tempest, Pericles, Twelfth Night and Cymbeline became seminal events in world Shakespeare production during the last 30 years. This is the first English-language book dedicated exclusively to Ninagawa's work. Featuring an overview of his extraordinary output, this study considers his Shakespearean work within the context of his overall career. Individual chapters cover Ninagawa's approach Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, in particular his landmark productions of Macbeth and Medea, and his eight separate productions of Hamlet. The volume includes a detailed analysis of the Sai-no-Kuni Shakespeare Series – in which Ninagawa set out to stage all of Shakespeare's plays in his hometown of Saitama, north of Tokyo. Written by Conor Hanratty, who studied with Ninagawa for over a year, it offers a unique and unprecedented glimpse into the work and approach of one of the world's great theatre directors.
The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy presents fifty-four essays by a range of scholars from all parts of the world. Together these essays offer readers a fresh and comprehensive understanding of Shakespeare tragedies as both works of literature and as performance texts written by a playwright who was himself an experienced actor. The opening section explores ways in which later generations of critics have shaped our idea of 'Shakespearean' tragedy, and addresses questions of genre by examining the playwright's inheritance from the classical and medieval past. The second section is devoted to current textual issues, while the third offers new critical readings of each of the tragedies. This is set beside a group of essays that deal with performance history, with screen productions, and with versions devised for the operatic stage, as well as with twentieth and twenty-first century re-workings of Shakespearean tragedy. The book's final section expands readers' awareness of Shakespeare's global reach, tracing histories of criticism and performance across Europe, the Americas, Australasia, the Middle East, Africa, India, and East Asia.
Great Shakespeareans presents a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. An essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.
Peter Hall (1930–2017) is one of the most influential directors of Shakespeare's plays in the modern age. Under his direction, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre rediscovered Shakespeare as a writer who could comment incisively on the modern world. Productions such as Coriolanus, The Wars of the Roses and Hamlet established his reputation as a director able to bring Shakespeare to the heart of contemporary politics. He later cemented his reputation with epic productions of Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra at the National. With the Peter Hall Company, Hall continued to work intensively on Shakespeare, directing plays in the UK and America. Reviewing Hall's work in its cultural and creative context, this study explores his approach to directing and rehearsal. This is the first book to analyse all of Hall's professional Shakespeare productions in a historical context, from the Suez crisis to the 9/11 attacks and beyond.
The National Theatre's years at the Old Vic were the most Shakespearean period in its history, one which included Laurence Olivier's Othello and Shylock, a radical all-male As You Like It, the Berliner Ensemble's Coriolanus and Tom Stoppard's classic offshoot, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead. Drawing extensively upon the company archives, this book tells the interlinked stories of the National's relationship with Shakespeare through a series of production case studies. Between them these illuminate Olivier's significance as actor and director, the National's pioneering accommodation of European theatre practitioners, and its ways of engaging Shakespeare with the contemporary.
An anthology of three exciting Japanese adaptations of Shakespeare that engage with issues such as changing family values, racial diversity, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and terrorism, together with a contextualizing introduction. The anthology makes contemporary Japanese adaptations of Shakespeare by three independent theatre companies available to a wider English language audience. The three texts are concerned with the social issues Japan faces today and Japan's perception of its cultural history. This unique collection is thus both a valuable resource for the fields of Shakespeare and adaptation studies as well as for a better understanding of contemporary Japanese theatre.
The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance is a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on Shakespeare and performance studies by an international team of leading scholars. It contains chapters on the key methods and questions surrounding the performance event, the audience, and the archive – the primary sources on which performance studies draws. It identifies the recurring trends and fruitful lines of inquiry that are generating the most urgent work in the field, but also contextualises these within the histories and methods on which researchers build. A central section of research-focused essays offers case studies of present areas of enquiry, from new approaches to space, bodies and language to work on the technologies of remediation and original practices, from consideration of fandoms and the cultural capital invested in Shakespeare and his contemporaries to political and ethical interventions in performance practice. A distinctive feature of the volume is a curated section focusing on practitioners, in which leading directors, writers, actors, producers, and other theatre professionals comment on Shakespeare in performance and what they see as the key areas, challenges and provocations for researchers to explore. In addition, the Handbook contains various sections that provide non-specialists with practical help: an A-Z of key terms and concepts, a guide to research methods and problems, a chronology of major publications and events, an introduction to resources for study of the field, and a substantial annotated bibliography. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance is a reference work aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars and libraries, a guide to beginning or developing research in the field, and an essential companion for all those interested in Shakespeare and performance.
Shakespeare Survey is a yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production. Since 1948, the Survey has published the best international scholarship in English and many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism. Each volume is devoted to a theme, or play, or group of plays; each also contains a section of reviews of that year's textual and critical studies and of the year's major British performances. The theme for Volume 68 is 'Shakespeare, Origins and Originality'. The complete set of Survey volumes is also available online at http://www.cambridge.org/online/shakespearesurvey. This fully searchable resource enables users to browse by author, essay and volume, search by play, theme and topic, and save and bookmark their results.
