Search results for ""Author Dr Peter Kirwan""

Cheek by Jowl, founded by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod in 1981, is one of the world’s most critically acclaimed classical theatre companies. Across seventeen productions of Shakespeare (as well as several by his contemporaries and other European dramatists), Cheek by Jowl’s experiments with text, space, light and bodies have produced bold reinventions of canonical and lesser-explored plays. Despite the pre-eminence of the company, its multiple awards and central place in the European repertory, this is the first substantive study of the company’s body of work. This book situates Cheek by Jowl’s work within the key institutions and traditions that have shaped the company’s development from low-budget beginnings at the Edinburgh Festival to international celebration, while also focusing specifically on the company’s use of Shakespeare to drive forward its practice. Drawing on the company’s work in English, Russian and French, the book uses key productions as case studies to interrogate the company’s unique style and build an argument for the distinctive insights offered by Cheek by Jowl’s approach. The book draws on new interviews with creative and administrative company members from the full span of Cheek by Jowl’s history as well as a full appraisal of the Cheek by Jowl archives, offering the first scholarly overview of the company’s work.

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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.

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