Shakespeare and Community Performance (Shakespeare in Practice)

✍ Scribed by Katherine Steele Brokaw

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 294
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book explores how productions of Shakespearean plays create meaning in specific communities, with special attention to issues of access, adaptation, and activism. Instead of focusing on large professional companies, it analyzes performances put on by community theatres and grassroots companies, and in applied drama projects. It looks at Shakespearean productions created by marginalized populations in Greater London, Harlem, and Los Angeles, a Hamlet staged in the remote Faroe Islands, and eco-theatre made in California’s Yosemite National Park. The book investigates why different communities perform Shakespeare, and what challenges, opportunities, and triumphs accompany the processes of theatrical production for both the artists and the communities in which they are embedded.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Community Shakespeare: Access, Adaptation, Activism
Terms and Theories (and a Few Case Studies)
Community
Amateur and Grassroots
Company Case Study: Merced Shakespearefest
Regional and Local
Company Case Study: Parrabbola
Community-Based Theatre, Applied Theatre, Theatre for Social Change, and Socially Engaged Performance
Company Case Study: Recycled Shakespeare Company
Global and Postcolonial Theatre; Multicultural and Intercultural Theatre
Company Case Study: Shakespeare in Paradise
Methods: A Performance Studies Approach
Ethnographic Methods: A Social Focus
Practice as Research (PaR): A Creative Focus
Applied Theatre: An Interventionist Focus
Why (and Why Not) Shakespeare?
Adaptation: A Creative Process
Access: A Social Endeavor
Activism: A Community Intervention
Introducing the Case Studies
Works Cited
Chapter 2: Public Shakespeare: Public Works (New York City) and Public Acts (UK)
A National Theatre for Great Britain
Joan Littlewood and Other British Community-Based Theatre
The 1916 Shakespearean Tercentenary Pageant (NYC)
Joe Papp, the New York City Shakespeare Festival, and the Public Theatre
Cornerstone Theater and American Community-Engaged Shakespeare
Public Works, New York City (Public Theater)
Public Acts, London and the UK (National Theatre of Great Britain)
Public Acts’ Pericles (2018)
Public Acts’ As You Like It (2019)
Evaluating and Valuing Community-Based Shakespeare
Works Cited
Productions Discussed
Chapter 3: Identity Shakespeare: L.A. Women’s Shakespeare Company and Harlem Shakespeare Festival
Early Histories: Navigating Gender, Race, Theatre, and Shakespeare
Women Playing Men in Shakespeare: The Early Years
L.A. Women’s Shakespeare Company is Born
The Work of L.A. Women’s Shakespeare Company
Final Days of L.A. Women’s Shakespeare Company and Growth of Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender
Harlem Theater, Black Shakespeare, and Othello: A Few Early Histories
Take Wing and Soar is Born
Beginning Harlem Shakespeare Festival and Meeting Lisa Wolpe
Becoming Othello, A Black Girl’s Journey
Legacies of Lisa Wolpe and LAWSC, and of Debra Ann Byrd and TWAS
Works Cited
Chapter 4: Island Shakespeare: Hamlet in the Faroe Islands
Setting the Scene: ‘A Fair Haven on the Windy Edge of Nothing’
Faroese Art, Theatre, and Shakespeare
Preparing a Hamlet on the Edge
Hamlet Part 1: A Funereal Opening
Hamlet Part 2: ‘To be or not to be, that’s that’
Hamlet Part 3: A Mise-en-scène Coup d’etat
Hamlet Part 4: A Visceral End
Community Practices, Global Theories
The Faroese Hamlet’s Local Legacies
Works Cited
Production Discussed
Chapter 5: Ecological Shakespeare: Shakespeare in Yosemite and the EarthShakes Alliance
Eco-dramaturgy
Practice as Research
As You Like It (2019)
Love’s Labor’s Lost (2022)
Shakespeare in our Planetary Community: EarthShakes Alliance and Beyond
Works Cited
Productions Cited
Index