- Joined
- Aug 11, 2011
- Messages
- 72,248
- Reaction score
- 44,020
- Gender
- Female
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
From the Daily Mail:
In an £800,000 project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, researchers at the University of Roehampton aimed to challenge this 'normative trend' by mounting a production of Gallathea [sic], which features characters disguised as the opposite sex.
The academics said the 16th century comedy, by Shakespeare's contemporary John Lyly, has had 'almost no stage history since 1588'.
The AHRC-funded project is devoted to 'centering marginalised communities in the contemporary performance of early modern plays'.
...Writing for the website Before Shakespeare, Andy Kesson, the project's principal investigator, said that 'masculinity and nationalism were crucial motivating factors in the rise of Shakespeare as the arbiter of literary greatness' and that '(we) need to be much, much more suspicious' of the Bard's place in contemporary theatre'.
...Tory MP Jane Stevenson, who sits on the culture, media and sport committee, said she was 'all for widening repertoire' but added: 'I'm not sure reducing Galatea to a celebration of all things woke, or knocking Shakespeare for being pale, male and stale is much more than cultural click-bait'. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...heatre-white-male-heterosexual-cisgender.html
What a dumb study. What a colossal waste of money. And just never mind that all the actors in Shakespearean plays were male, including those playing female characters. (And then there is Viola of Twelfth Night, who was a female disguised as a male and played by a guy. Shakespeare endures because it's great literature and poetry. Going back through history to force our sensibilities onto the 16th century is a fool's errand.
In an £800,000 project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, researchers at the University of Roehampton aimed to challenge this 'normative trend' by mounting a production of Gallathea [sic], which features characters disguised as the opposite sex.
The academics said the 16th century comedy, by Shakespeare's contemporary John Lyly, has had 'almost no stage history since 1588'.
The AHRC-funded project is devoted to 'centering marginalised communities in the contemporary performance of early modern plays'.
...Writing for the website Before Shakespeare, Andy Kesson, the project's principal investigator, said that 'masculinity and nationalism were crucial motivating factors in the rise of Shakespeare as the arbiter of literary greatness' and that '(we) need to be much, much more suspicious' of the Bard's place in contemporary theatre'.
...Tory MP Jane Stevenson, who sits on the culture, media and sport committee, said she was 'all for widening repertoire' but added: 'I'm not sure reducing Galatea to a celebration of all things woke, or knocking Shakespeare for being pale, male and stale is much more than cultural click-bait'. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...heatre-white-male-heterosexual-cisgender.html
What a dumb study. What a colossal waste of money. And just never mind that all the actors in Shakespearean plays were male, including those playing female characters. (And then there is Viola of Twelfth Night, who was a female disguised as a male and played by a guy. Shakespeare endures because it's great literature and poetry. Going back through history to force our sensibilities onto the 16th century is a fool's errand.
