Programme
SKELETON PROGRAMME
For the skeleton programme, please click here: BSA2014 Skeleton Programme 18 June
FULL PROGRAMME
For the full programme, please click here: BSA2014 Full Programme19June
WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS
The following workshops and seminars will be running during the course of the conference:
Workshop (1): Directing Jacobean Tragedy in Schools.
On Thursday at 2pm, Cathy O’Neill (Oxford High School for Girls, GDST) will be leading a workshop on Directing Jacobean Tragedy in Schools. Please sign up on the sheet at the Registration desk when you register. Maximum 20 delegates.
Cathy O’Neill has directed an annual Jacobean tragedy at Oxford High School since 2007. In the workshop she will be looking at scenes from Hamlet, Measure for Measure, The Changeling and The Duchess of Malfi.
Seminar 2g: Text, Power and Authority in The Hollow Crown
On Thursday at 4pm, Ramona Wray (Queen’s University, Belfast) will be leading a seminar on Text, Power and Authority in The Hollow Crown – please watch the film beforehand, and sign up on the sheet at the Registration desk when you register. Maximum 20 delegates.
Participants are invited to reflect upon issues of Shakespearean text, power and authority as they manifest themselves in The Hollow Crown (2012). How does this series of four original language adaptations understand the ‘text’ of Shakespeare’s Henriad? In an Olympic year, and during a period of national self-reflection and celebration, to what extent does Shakespearean power make itself felt through television? How is monarchical power represented in this series? And in what ways might any of the four films be considered ‘authoritative’? At a time when The Hollow Crown is generating considerable scholarly debate, this seminar invites responses to these and related questions.
Advance Viewing: The Hollow Crown
Session 4g: Academic Publishing
On Friday at 11am, Andrew Hiscock will be leading a Q&A session on Academic Publishing.
Workshop (2): Metaphors of Leadership in Shakespeare
At 2pm on Friday 4th July, Tracy Irish (University of Warwick) and Phyllida Hancock (Warwick Business School Create Team) will be leading a workshop on Metaphors of leadership in Shakespeare. Please sign up on the sheet at the Registration desk when you register. Maximum 20 delegates.
This active workshop will explore how models of leadership offered in Shakespeare’s texts can be used to interrogate modern workplace relationships. We will look at how the ambiguity of Shakespeare’s language in play allows us to examine our cultural assumptions and habits through the connotations we bring to conceptual metaphors associated with aspects of authority. The workshop will draw on current research from business training and metaphor theory as well as the practical education and acting experience of the presenters.
We will be exploring two learning journeys – one from a ‘comedy’ and one from a ‘mystery’ play (those terms themselves being ambiguous, depending on yours, and the characters’, point of view). In As You Like It, the Court and Forest offer up two very different ways of living, working and co-existing: one very direct, plain-speaking and to the point, with no tolerance of differentness or disagreement; the other seemingly embracing all sorts of self-expression, from polymorphism and poetry to mockery and music. How does learning happen in these different environments – from school or from the world and people around us? And what is necessary for survival? Is it worth it? The answer seems to be in finding common, shared bonds that bring people together and help them overcome their differences, but we know that that is easier said than done in modern business.
In Measure for Measure, the journey goes in the other direction: Isabella and Angelo apparently start from similar positions regarding sin and fornication, but are propelled into extreme positions by their inability to reconcile their shared values with their emotions – Isabella to ‘More than our brother is our chastity’ and Angelo to ‘now I give my sensual race the rein’. What happens when an over-zealous adherence to (sometimes religious) values comes into conflict with the real world and the lives and beliefs of others? Where does regulation come into it?
There are also questions to ask about the ambiguity of leadership in these plays – the two Dukes in As You Like It in their different environments; the absent/present/disguised Duke and his deputy in Measure for Measure. What do we look for from our leaders and how do they take permission to act on our behalf?
Workshop (3): Shakespeare’s Direction to the Actor : Reading the First Folio as a Performance Blueprint
On Saturday at 11am, Andrew Jarvis will be leading a performance workshop on Shakespeare’s Direction to the Actor : Reading the First Folio as a Performance Blueprint Please sign up on the sheet at the Registration desk when you register. Maximum 20 delegates.
The First Folio is a concrete record of Shakespeare’s plays in performance. I contend that what on many occasions has been taken by the modern Editor to be abominable First Folio typesetting, is in fact, extraordinary rhetorical and theatrical information – information which gives a blueprint to the actor on not only how the text was expressed in the original Playhouse, but also how it should be expressed now.
Ben Jonson was probably the first playwright to supervise the printing of his own plays. Shakespeare did not – but two of his Company of actors did. They, and the Printing House of Jaggard, it becomes apparent, wanted to do the very best they could for Shakespeare when they set about producing this record of his plays.
What they have set in the First Folio is an expression of Elizabethan and Jacobean rhetoric – these are plays which are to be heard. Unlike our own world, they did not fall under the dictates of written poetic and syntactic literary exactitude.
The misunderstanding of this difference has lead to an obfuscation of the integrity of the First Folio. For example, an exaggeration of the presence and influence of other hands, leading to an erroneous emphasis on the general sense of a culture of mistakes and inexactness in the Printing House, has been misleading.
My contention is that the description of “interfering hands” becomes an easy displacement – if we misguidedly search for grammatical and poetic correctness, but find only expressive peculiarities and irregularities.
My experience in 45 years as a professional actor and director has lead me to the conclusion that in 99 cases out of 100, the rhetorical clues left for us in the First Folio open a landscape to a deeper and richer scope for theatrical performance : expression which is not available to us if these supposed mistakes and irregularities are removed or ironed out by the modern Editor.
This Workshop aims to demonstrate, and to elaborate upon, this thesis.
FILMS
Throughout the conference, delegates will also have the opportunity to enjoy a programme of Shakespeare films.
At the macrobert Picture House, films will include Joss Whedon’s acclaimed Much Ado About Nothing (2012) on the Thursday night, introduced by a leading expert on Shakespearean film, and on Saturday afternoon, Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet (1921), with a discussion and Q&A session.
Much Ado About Nothing will be open to the public, but delegates will benefit from a reduced rate ticket (£4.50). Please show your conference badge at the macrobert Box Office when you purchase your ticket to ensure you receive the discount.
Hamlet will be screened in collaboration with the Goethe Institut Glasgow. Tickets for Hamlet will be available from the macrobert Box Office from 3 July onwards. These tickets will be free to conference delegates – please take your conference badge and show it at the Box Office to pick up your ticket. The film will be followed by a Q&A session, led by Professor Stuart Hampton Reeves.
During the conference, there will also be an exciting seminar and viewing in the Pathfoot Building, led by Professor John Drakakis, on adaptations of Macbeth, including Maqbool and Joe Macbeth. Further details to follow.