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Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices
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Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787). This special issue belongs to the section "Transdisciplinary Humanities".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2025) | Viewed by 7705

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Cynthia Lewis

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Guest Editor
Emeritus, English Department, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28036, USA
Interests: early modern drama; creative nonfiction

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Shakespearean performance continues to push boundaries, whether involving internationalities, media, or innovations of casting, setting, and various forms of adaptation. This Special Issue is open to all contemporary perspectives on the subject: theater history, personal experience in the theater, stage history, and new approaches to performing early modern plays. Examples might include new findings about original stage directions or practices; the use of performance in teaching Shakespeare; performance of Shakespeare in non-Western countries or in languages other than English; current trends in historically traditional companies (e.g., the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of As You Like It in 2023, whose cast of main characters included no one under the age of 60); other issues of casting (e.g., race, gender, disability); the role of the First Folio in directing, teaching, and acting Shakespeare; direct experience in acting or directing Shakespeare’s plays or founding an acting company; and experimentation with performance in new or familiar media. Various types of essays are also welcome, whether personal narrative, literary journalism, or traditional scholarship. The final aim of this Special Issue is to distill a panorama of current practices, new research, and creative ventures through essays of 6000 to 10,000 words.

Prof. Dr. Cynthia Lewis
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 210 KiB  
Article
No Small Parts (Only Speechless Women)
by Paige Martin Reynolds
Humanities 2025, 14(5), 111; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14050111 - 20 May 2025
Abstract
When it comes to acting in modern productions of Shakespeare’s plays, size is more than all talk. That is, though how much a character speaks often serves as the measure of a role’s size, “small parts” may have a lot to say—and, as [...] Read more.
When it comes to acting in modern productions of Shakespeare’s plays, size is more than all talk. That is, though how much a character speaks often serves as the measure of a role’s size, “small parts” may have a lot to say—and, as it turns out, the actors playing them may have a lot (or too little) to do. Some modern approaches to dramaturgy and practice may mean that the performers playing roles not qualified as large are susceptible to isolation throughout the artistic process, possibly having reduced rehearsal time. If the number of spoken lines influences the number of rehearsal hours, an actor playing a “small part” may be at a disadvantage when it comes to opportunities for character development and the benefits of creative collaboration. (In a rehearsal process for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, how active might Hippolyta’s participation be if she is not doubling as Titania?) Additionally, having fewer lines on the stage can mean inheriting more labor behind the scenes, since an available body is a valuable commodity in the economy of production (what tasks might Ursula undertake during Much Ado About Nothing?). The tension between “playing conditions” and “working conditions” in the theater is thus especially heightened for Shakespeare’s women, whose onstage existence can throw an uncanny shadow upon the offstage experiences of those who play them. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
11 pages, 198 KiB  
Article
‘Enter Kent, Gloster, and Bastard’: Beginning King Lear and the Choice of the Audience
by Peter Holland
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 65; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030065 - 13 Mar 2025
Viewed by 374
Abstract
The title page of the first quarto of Shakespeare’s 1608 King Lear foregrounds many things: Shakespeare’s name in the largest font used, an emphasis that this King Lear is “HIS”, the fascination with Edgar as “Tom of Bedlam” and the [...] Read more.
The title page of the first quarto of Shakespeare’s 1608 King Lear foregrounds many things: Shakespeare’s name in the largest font used, an emphasis that this King Lear is “HIS”, the fascination with Edgar as “Tom of Bedlam” and the fact that this is the play “As it was played before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall upon S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes”. The particularity of that moment and its complex implications has been explored before, of course, but there are new ways to rethink that moment when the play met a particular gathering of spectators in a particular room on that day in the Christmas holidays. And, from that interaction, this article moves on to consider other performances that define such purposive positionings of the play. It is one thing to, say, perform King Lear in the repertory of the RSC and something very different to perform it, for example, to an audience of carers for the elderly as part of Theatre of War’s King Lear Project. As Kent and Gloucester begin the play, so King Lear negotiates with its audiences, usually made up of play-goers who have chosen the play and sometimes those who have been chosen by the play. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
17 pages, 239 KiB  
Article
The Untitled Othello Project: Theoretical Implications of Untitling
by Emily D. Bryan
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030064 - 13 Mar 2025
Viewed by 535
Abstract
This essay analyzes The Untitled Othello Project (UOP) created by Keith Hamilton Cobb. Originating out of conversations around his play American Moor and coinciding with George Floyd’s murder and the period of racial unrest and reflection in the United States, UOP is a [...] Read more.
This essay analyzes The Untitled Othello Project (UOP) created by Keith Hamilton Cobb. Originating out of conversations around his play American Moor and coinciding with George Floyd’s murder and the period of racial unrest and reflection in the United States, UOP is a transformative approach to Shakespeare studies around issues of pedagogy and performance. Rooted in Cobb’s frustration with systemic racism and exclusion in the capitalist American theater as depicted in American Moor, UOP applies a method called “untitling”, a collaborative and reflective process of dismantling and reimagining Shakespeare’s Othello beyond its origins. This essay examines UOP’s interdisciplinary methods. As a collaborator and witness to UOP residencies at Sacred Heart University, I argue that the untitling methodology deploys phenomenological hermeneutics, reparative reading, and critical pedagogy, drawing on Ricoeur, Sedgwick, Boal, and Freire in the context of recent developments in critical race studies, especially through scholars of RaceB4Race and #shakerace. The untitling process requires slow, collective readings of Othello, focusing on identity, language, and the racist, patriarchal, and ableist social constructs propping up Shakespeare’s play. By inviting diverse voices—including actors, scholars, students, and audiences—to the table, UOP privileges the human beings in the room over the canonical text. UOP resists universalizing readings of Shakespeare’s play and, with a spirit of inquiry, encourages collaborative authority to lift up marginalized perspectives. This essay establishes UOP within the context of Shakespeare performance pedagogy, seeking to define its affordances for humanities study at the college level. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
18 pages, 325 KiB  
Article
Romeo and Juliet in Korea: Love and the War
by Yu Jin Ko
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030042 - 24 Feb 2025
Viewed by 609
Abstract
Romeo and Juliet remains one of the most frequently performed plays of Shakespeare in Korea, one reason for which is obvious: the feud between the Capulets and Montagues resonates with the continuing division of Korea into North and South. Indeed, many productions of [...] Read more.
Romeo and Juliet remains one of the most frequently performed plays of Shakespeare in Korea, one reason for which is obvious: the feud between the Capulets and Montagues resonates with the continuing division of Korea into North and South. Indeed, many productions of the play in South Korea since the Korean War (1950–53) have made direct and indirect allusions to the political reality of division. Nothing defines Korea so much as division and the desire to overcome that division. With this context in mind, my essay will examine four representative but unique productions of the play from the War period to the twenty-first century: a women’s musical theater adaptation during the War that was a popular success; a production by the Mokwha Repertory Theatre from the early 2000s that alludes directly to the state of division into North and South, and which has toured the globe; a 2009 musical theater version by the National Changgeuk Company of Korea that emphasizes regional rivalries; and a 2022 production that sets the play in the DMZ. However, while exploring the depiction of division in these productions, I will focus in particular on how marriage is understood in relation to national division and the possibility of reconciliation. I will argue that the productions bring attention to the intersection of the social and political practices that sustain division. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
22 pages, 299 KiB  
Article
Signs and Semblances: The Problem of Likability in Some Recent Productions of Much Ado About Nothing
by James Newlin
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020036 - 18 Feb 2025
Viewed by 682
Abstract
Following the “intertextual turn” in adaptation studies, scholars of Shakespearean performance have embraced the interpretive possibilities offered by infidelity, focusing increasingly on the corrective potential of recent stagings and adaptations. Such productions are not primarily valuable as progressive rewrites, however. In claiming not [...] Read more.
Following the “intertextual turn” in adaptation studies, scholars of Shakespearean performance have embraced the interpretive possibilities offered by infidelity, focusing increasingly on the corrective potential of recent stagings and adaptations. Such productions are not primarily valuable as progressive rewrites, however. In claiming not to be “Shakespeare”, these productions make testable claims about the nature of the Shakespearean playtext. In this paper, I examine two recent stage productions and one non-traditional film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing: Kenny Leon’s 2019 Public Theater production, Chris Abraham’s 2023 Stratford Festival production, and Will Gluck’s 2023 romantic comedy Anyone But You. All three performances are consciously unfaithful to Shakespeare’s text or setting, and their revisions attend to making the characters’ behavior more palatable for a contemporary liberal–progressive audience. Yet when we compare these revisions with the original playtext, Shakespeare’s own views come into sharper relief, as does our own inclination to identify with characters that Shakespeare’s immediate audience may have felt quite distanced from. I argue that in their drive to correct the play and make the characters more likable, these productions paper over Shakespeare’s critique of the arbitrary construction—and violent enforcement—of social hierarchy. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida’s notion of the parergon, I show that Shakespeare’s deliberate narrative framing invites a more skeptical, disapproving understanding of his characters. My hope is that this discussion leads to an understanding of Much Ado About Nothing as a “problem play” rather than a “problematic” one. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
17 pages, 290 KiB  
Article
Bad Shakespeare: Performing Failure
by Anna Blackwell
Humanities 2024, 13(6), 157; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13060157 - 15 Nov 2024
Viewed by 1215
Abstract
The Shakespearean actor is a readily recognisable figure within the transatlantic cultural landscape. They may move regularly between the theatrical environs, which garnered them the appellation and more mainstream fare in television or film, but they are always, somehow, Shakespearean. However, if [...] Read more.
The Shakespearean actor is a readily recognisable figure within the transatlantic cultural landscape. They may move regularly between the theatrical environs, which garnered them the appellation and more mainstream fare in television or film, but they are always, somehow, Shakespearean. However, if easily identified, the Shakespearean actor is harder to define. For example, the multi-volume Great Shakespeareans shortlists individuals who, in editors Peter Holland’s and Adrian Poole’s words, have had ‘the greatest influence on both the interpretation, understanding and reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally’). But such scholarly endeavours consistently stop short of describing any social or cultural function which the Shakespearean may fill or any implicit ideological work at hand in the naming of actors as Shakespeareans. These omissions are all the more curious because, while its attribution is inherently positive in the examples above, popular culture also abounds with rather less illustrious Shakespeareans. Consider, for instance, how Niles and Frasier Crane watched, appalled, while their childhood icon, Jackson Hedley (Derek Jacobi), gurned and groaned on stage. Playing a caricature of himself in Extras, meanwhile, Ian McKellen confides that he knew what to say in The Lord of the Rings because ‘the words were written down for me’. Welcome to bad Shakespeare: a trope that has existed for as long as there has been the potential for ‘good’ Shakespeareanism. For evidence, one needs only consider Hamlet’s stubborn insistence that actors deliver their lines ‘trippingly on the tongue’. Bad Shakespeare has no such luck, however. From Mr Wopsle in Great Expectations to Alan Rickman’s frustrated thespian-turned-science-fiction-star in Galaxy Quest (‘How did I come to this? I played Richard III. There were five curtain calls’), these Shakespeareans are hammy, self-congratulating and embarrassing; they exhibit what David McGowan calls ‘visible acting’. Reversing a more typical focus on prestige and skill, this article will reflect on what it says about our relationship to Shakespeare that we take such evident and knowing pleasure in watching highly respected performers apparently fail at their jobs. Building on film studies and scholarship on badfilms, I will consider whether these fictional performances of failure only reify existing norms of ‘good’ performance or if they offer more subversive possibilities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
25 pages, 13661 KiB  
Article
“Are Ye Fantastical?”: Shakespeare’s Weird W[omen] in the 21st-Century Indian Adaptations Maqbool, Mandaar and Joji
by Subarna Mondal and Anindya Sen
Humanities 2024, 13(2), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13020042 - 29 Feb 2024
Viewed by 2847
Abstract
Shakespeare’s Macbeth has traveled a long way from its original milieu. This paper takes three major 21st-century Indian adaptions of Macbeth as its primary texts. The city of Mumbai in the west in Maqbool, an imaginary coastal Bengal village in the east [...] Read more.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth has traveled a long way from its original milieu. This paper takes three major 21st-century Indian adaptions of Macbeth as its primary texts. The city of Mumbai in the west in Maqbool, an imaginary coastal Bengal village in the east in Mandaar, and the suburbs of Kerala in Joji in the south of the subcontinent become sites of “creative mistranslations” of the play. In this paper, we take the ambiguity that Shakespeare’s witches evoke in the early 17th-century Scottish world as a point of entry and consider how that ambiguity is translated in its 21st-century Indian on-screen adaptations. Cutting across spaciotemporal boundaries, the witches remain a source of utmost significance through their presence/absence in the adaptations discussed. In Maqbool, Shakespeare’s heath-hags become male upper-caste law-keepers, representing the tyrannies of state machinery. Mandaar’s witches become direct agents of Mandaar’s annihilation at the end after occupying a deceptively marginal position in the sleazy world of Gailpur. In an apparent departure, Joji’s world is shorn of witches, making him appear as the sole perpetrator of the destruction in a fiercely patriarchal family. A closer reading, however, reveals the ominous presence of some insidious power that defies the control of any individual. The compass that directs Macbeth and its adaptations, from the West to the East, from 1606 to date, is the fatalism that the witches weave, in their seeming absence as well as in their portentous presence. We cannot help but consider them as yardsticks in any tragedy that deals with the age-old dilemma of predestination and free will. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
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