ACADEMIC PRESENTS RESTORATION SHAKESPEARE SHOWCASE AT GLOBE THEATRE  

12 August 2019

Professor Richard Schoch from the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s co-presented a showcase of Restoration Shakespeare in the Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe last month (17 July).

The showcase, which was open to the public, included live performances of music and scenes from late 17th-century, Restoration-era adaptations of Shakespeare's The Tempest and Macbeth.

The showcase was part of 'Performing Restoration Shakespeare', an international, multinational, interdisciplinary research project sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The initiative brings together scholars and practitioners in theatre and music to investigate how and why Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare succeeded in performance in their own time (i.e., 1660-1714) and how and why they can succeed in performance today.

Professor Schoch is co-leading the project with Professor Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Associate Professor of Music History and Cultures in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) at Syracuse University.

Speaking about the project, Professor Schoch said: "When theatres reopened after the English civil war, few new plays were available. As a result, theatre companies presented Shakespeare in new, exciting ways.

"These extravagant adaptations were popular then, and still are today. Our performances of The Tempest at the Globe and Macbeth [at the Folger] have attracted wide press coverage and sold-out audiences."

In addition to the performances, Professor Schoch and Professor Eubanks Winkler facilitated a discussion with Will Tosh, lecturer and research fellow at Shakespeare's Globe; Robert Richmond, stage director of the acclaimed 2018 production of Macbeth at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C. (funded in part by 'Performing Restoration Shakespeare'); and Bob Eisenstein, Macbeth music director.

When London theatres reopened in 1660 upon the restoration of the monarchy, few new plays were available. Logically, the patent companies staged works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. But they did not perform Shakespeare's plays the way that the Bard’s own company had done decades earlier.

In the Restoration theatre, women (and not boy actors) played women's roles; the new indoor theatres were equipped with a proscenium arch and moveable scenery; and song, music and dance featured more prominently. With few exceptions, the plays were rewritten, sometimes radically: King Lear survived; the witches in Macbeth sang and danced; Miranda in The Tempest had a sister.

Performing Restoration Shakespeare seeks to create immediate and lasting impact outside academia by engaging and collaborating with theatre and music producers, individual performing artists, and the general public.

For more information on the 'Performing Restoration Shakespeare' project, please visit www.restorationshakespeare.org or follow @PRShakes on Twitter.

To submit graduate news items, or for general enquiries about this story, please contact Gerry Power, Communications Officer, Development and Alumni Relations Office, Queen's University Belfast or telephone: +44 (0)28 9097 5321.

Main image by David Mark from Pixabay; headline image by RGY23.

 

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