Brave New Worlds: Shakespeare in Performance

Please join us for the research presentation of Richard Schoch, professor of drama at Queen's University, Belfast. Professor Schoch is a historian whose research encompasses theater historiography, Shakespeare in performance, and cultural history. He is currently leading the AHRC-funded project 'Performing Restoration Shakespeare' (2017-2019), a practice-based research project run in partnership with Shakespeare's Globe, The Folger Shakespeare Library (USA) and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Abstract: The most over-quoted line in Shakespeare studies is Ben Jonson's laudation in the 1623 First Folio, the first published collection of Shakespeare's plays: 'He was not of an age, but for all time'. Yet in the study of Shakespeare on the stage, the playwright's continuing relevance - 'for all time' - is often radically abridged. Theater scholars tend to place Shakespeare either in his original time or in their own time. What about all the times in between? This talk will explore the neglected contours of Shakespeare performance history by looking at the 'in between' performances that are routinely unexamined. Schoch challenges the binary reduction of Shakespeare to a theater artist who is either remotely past or perpetually present.