Engendering the Stage in the Age of Shakespeare and Beyond centres dialogue between scholars, students, and professional theatre practitioners to rethink gender on the early modern stage and its resonance for casting, staging, and design in contemporary classical theatre. Its scope extends beyond the confines of Shakespeare’s Globe and the myth of the all-male stage to explore the exciting possibilities of gendered performance evident on the stages of Europe and in the work of less-famous playwrights.
Women and queer and trans artists and artisans were central to the theatres of early modern Europe, and this book’s collaborative exploration of this historical evidence opens exciting new avenues for theatrical production and research. It mobilizes shared insights by scholars and theatre practitioners who hold deep investments in gender equity in their respective workplaces and explores Two-Spirit and trans histories typically excluded in both theatre history studies and present-day performance repertoires.
Engendering the Stage in the Age of Shakespeare and Beyond offers provocations arising from a five-day Performance as Research (PaR) workshop at the Stratford Festival. Featuring guest artist and actor commentary, a poem, a zine, scholarly essays and reflections, and three specially commissioned visual art pieces, the book adapts to print form the open and exploratory spirit of the workshop itself, inviting readers to embrace the possibilities of trans-disciplinary, provisional knowledges and knowledge dissemination that are central to PaR methodologies.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Part 1: Setting the Stage
Introduction
Peter Cockett and Melinda J. Gough
1. The Meeting of Art and Academia
Keira Loughran
Part 2: Beyond the Globe
2. Architectures of Gender
E.M. Parry with Peter Cockett and Melinda Gough
3. We Exist When We Tell Our Stories
Carmen Alvis
Part 3: Energies, Evidence, Emergent Practices
4. Potential Energies in the Early Modern French Repertoire
Ellen Welch
5. The PaRchive: Archiving Process in Practice-as-Research and the Work of
Theatre History
Callan Davies
6. A Note to Mary Frith
SL Grange
Part 4: Skill, Power, and Swordplay
7. Drawing Your Weapon
Peter Cockett and Melinda J. Gough with Cole Alvis, Emma Frankland, Lily
McEvenue, and Denise Oucharek
8. Casting The Roaring Girl: Embodied Skill, History, and Lived Experience
Clare McManus
Part 5: Stepping Beyond Binaries
9. "Mincing Steps" and "Manly Strides": Practicing Gendered Footwork on the
Early Modern Stage
Natasha Korda
10. Performing Gender "From the Ground Up"
Peter Cockett and Melinda J. Gough with Emma Frankland, Lily McEvenue, André
Morin, Marcus Nance, and Denise Oucharek
11. Two Shadows to One Shape
E.M. Parry with Peter Cockett and Melinda J. Gough
Part 6: Disruptive Boys
12. Boi-Actrx
E.M. Parry with Peter Cockett and Melinda J. Gough
13. A Question to Be Asked: Boy Actors, Performance as Research, and Theatre
History
Roberta Barker and Lucy Munro
Part 7: Rehearsing, Teaching, Translating
14. Calling across from Our Difference: Teaching (Gender) Nonconforming
Characters in Early Modern English Drama
Jessica Swain
15. Rehearsing The Lieutenant Nun: Translation in Action
Edward McLean Test
Part 8: Dreaming PaR Futures
16. To Degender is to Decolonize
Madeleine Krusto and Kitoko Mai
(Non)Conclusions
Peter Cockett and Melinda J. Gough
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Peter Cockett is an associate professor of integrated arts at McMaster University.
Melinda J. Gough is a professor of English and cultural studies at McMaster University.
