A staged reading of James Shirley’s The Politician (1639), which tells a tale of court intrigue and ruthless deception, will be held at Smock Alley Dublin on Thursday 4th April 2019. The production will be directed by Kellie Hughes and performed by University College Dublin drama students.
The staged is organised by Prof Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex) who is also currently editing the play.
James Shirley (1596-1666)
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From the dlr Mill theatre Dundrum website.
Directed by Geoff O’Keeffe for MILL PRODUCTIONS, this abridged version of Romeo and Juliet is an ideal opportunity to expose Junior Cycle students to their first live Shakespeare experience.
Throughout the year the venue also offers you and your pupils (at all levels) the opportunity to really engage with your chosen text by offering Drama Workshops to bring these texts to life. Workshops are led by experienced facilitators and designed to engage the student creatively by exploring characters, themes and language of your chosen text. Mill Productions has produced 2 Shakespeare plays every year for many years – including Macbeth in 2018, King Lear 2017 and Hamlet 2016. For booking details see the dlr Mill theatre Dundrum website here.
FULL CAST:
Jack Mullarkey Romeo
Gillian Buckle Juliet
Michael James Ford Capulet
Serena Brabazon Lady Capulet
Evelyn Shaw Nurse
Brian James Gilligan Friar / Tybalt
Rachel O’Connell Mercutio
Ethan Dillon Benvolio
Gillian Buckle and Jack Mullarkey in Romeo and Juliet – Mill Productions 2019
Indian Shakespeares is an established field of study, but no international conference has yet centralised the issue of the female in Indian Shakespeares. Recent feminist works include the retelling of King Lear in Sangeeta Datta’s film Life Goes On (2010) or in Preti Taneja’s novel We That Are Young (2017), Romeo and Juliet in Arshinagar (dir. Aparna Sen) or Bornila Chatterjee’s 2016 film adaptation of Titus Andronicus, The Hungry. Indeed, it has been argued that the women in Vishal Bhardwaj’s celebrated hero-centric film trilogy possess transformative agency. Such works have continued to reshape the debate surrounding the role of women.
This conference thus emerges in the context of these retellings and recent historical events in India and worldwide. It aims to explore uncharted territory, bringing together researchers and practitioners to establish the state of current scholarship in this vibrant, under-examined field. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, panels, workshops and creative approaches on any aspect of Women and Indian Shakespeares. Alternative presentations are also equally welcome, such as film shorts, film scripts, etc.
Contributions are invited on any of the following aspects of the topic:
* Depictions of women in Indian Shakespeares on screen or on stage
* Indian female practitioners of Shakespeare
* Female Indian diasporic practitioners of Shakespeare
* Examinations of cross-dressed women
* Examinations of cross-gendered casting
* Transgender women in Indian Shakespeares
* LGBTQ Indian Shakespeares
* Feminist theory and intersectionality in relation to Indian Shakespeares
* Issues of caste in relation to women and Indian Shakespeares
* Regional perspectives and representations of women
* Challenges of researching Women and Indian Shakespeares
200-300 word abstracts for works to be presented at the conference should be sent by 1st April 2019. Together with the abstract, participants are invited to send a brief (up to 100 words) bio stating their affiliation, research interests and relevant academic output. Decisions will be made by 1 June 2019. Both abstracts and bios should be sent in Word or PDF format to: indianshakespeares@gmail.com If accepted, abstracts will be circulated among conference participants in advance of the event. Auditors are also welcome to attend, but priority will be given to those presenting.
Confirmed speakers include:
Organising Committee (Queen’s University, Belfast):
Dr. Thea Buckley, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow (co-chair)
Dr. Rosa García Periago, Marie Curie Research Fellow (co-chair)
Prof. Mark Thornton Burnett (consultant)
All Is True follows Shakespeare in the final days of his life in 1613. With his beloved Globe theatre burned to the ground – an accident that took place during a performance of his play Henry VIII: All Is True – Shakespeare returns to Stratford. After long periods away from his family, Shakespeare attempts to reconcile and reconnect with his wife and children.
Written by Ben Elton and directed by Kenneth Branagh, the film stars Branagh as William Shakespeare, Judi Dench as his wife Anne Hathaway, and Ian McKellen as Sir Henry Wriothesley (the dedicatee of Shakespeare’s narrative poem “The Rape of Lucrece”.)
All Is True opens in Irish cinemas on 8th February 2019.
Watch the trailer here.
The Shakespeare family – All Is True (photo credit Sony Pictures)
From the Lir website.
This new contemporary adaptation of Pericles at The Lir Academy turns William Shakespeare’s classical tale into a modern-day take on the refugee crisis, in a story of resilience and hope.
When Antiochus, the malign ruler of Syria becomes a threat, Pericles must escape conflict and flee his country, risking his life at sea. In this modern-day adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s Romances, Pericles becomes a refugee, a modern hero. His strength and resilience will be tested by the Gods as he seeks asylum in different lands, meets love, faces loss, and is ultimately restored to his rightful place.
Director Conall Morrison brings a unique spin to a classic text , a remarkable play that fuses struggle and strife with love, magic and redemption.
Note: This production contains strobe lighting, smoke effects and loud noises.
Friday 8th Feb 7.30pm to Thursday 14th Feb 7.30pm — Studio One
Matinee: Tuesday 12th Feb 1.00pm — Studio One
See the Lir website here.
Review: Macbeth at the Mill Theatre, Dundrum, Dublin, October 3rd-26th, 2018, directed by Geoff O’Keefe
Review by Ema Vyroubalová, Trinity College Dublin.
This was an engaging and fast-paced production, notable particularly for its rendering of the Witches, intriguing choices of doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling of roles, as well as an imaginatively conceived yet also very functional stage set. Because the play opens with the three Witches on stage, how a particular director chooses to portray this trio helps set the tone of the rest of the production. O’Keefe’s Witches were dressed in loose black garbs and hooded capes, designed to enable the actors to see but to prevent others from seeing their faces. The effect of these costumes (designed by Olga Criado Monleon) was quite eerie, especially as it gradually became clear to us in the audience, from the changing voices and the varying statures of the black-clad figures, that the roles of the witches in different scenes were being rotated among different actors. A look in the programme indeed reveals that five of the nine cast members play a witch at some point: Shane Quigley Murphy is both a Witch and Lennox; Andrew Kenny, Matthew O’Brien, and Ailbhe Cowley are triple-cast as Witch/Banquo/Doctor, Witch/Malcolm/Murderer, and Witch/Ross/Gentlewoman respectively; and Eanna Hardwicke gets to be Witch/Captain/Fleance/Young Siward. I suspect that the bundling of parts was to some extent prompted by budgetary constraints and/or availability of actors. But the unusual implementation of this bundling in regards to the Witches presents these figures as ubiquitous forces that not only shape the play’s events but that also somehow emanate from the world of the play’s human protagonists rather than from a separate supernatural realm.
It is worth noting that the production avoided the more common double-casting of Lady Macbeth with one of the Witches—likely because it would have implied the kind of too specific pre-emptive power dynamic between the human and the supernatural worlds this production sought to steer clear of. The Witches appeared as silent characters in a number of scenes where Shakespeare’s playscript does not call for their presence. They hovered in the background or foreground, watching the others’ actions or enacting inscrutable ceremonies around the cauldron (which stood at the front of the stage for the whole duration of the performance) and over a miniature replica of a semi-derelict medieval castle hall (or perhaps the nave of a church?) (which was located near the right-hand stage exit). As they did so, they periodically emerged out of dark corners of the set only to blend back into them. This underscored the witches’ omnipresence in a very physical way, by literally keeping at least one of them on stage for the majority of the show. A Witch thus watches as Duncan receives Macbeth to give him the good news of his newly gained title; a different Witch listens as Lady Macbeth reads out the fateful letter from her husband and then observes from the background the meeting between the Macbeths. The resulting integration of the Witches into virtually every moment of the play, whether through the overlapping in the casting of the majority of the roles or their insertions into most scenes as silent figures, ironically makes it very difficult to hypothesize about their roles in the play’s moral universe. They can be seen as representing everything, anything, and nothing at the same time—similar to how the dark void of the colour black results from absorbing all frequencies of light.
The remaining double and triple casting choices would seem to confirm this production’s refusal to locate the source of evil in the play somewhere in the triangle of usual suspects constituted by Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and the Witches. Jed Murray plays both MacDuff and one of the Murderers while Damien Devaney plays Duncan, Porter, and Seyton. Only the roles of Macbeth (Neill Fleming) and his wife (Nichola Macevilly) are spared from this production’s love affair with doubling and trebling of roles, which ultimately emphasises the couple’s isolation and self-consuming despair. The set, designed by Gerard Bourke, creatively utilised the whole available space both vertically and horizontally as it included tree trunks, rocks, and caverns that the actors could variously position themselves on, in, or under. The set also featured a human skeleton and a partially burnt cadaver ominously suspended above the stage and periodically lit (lighting design by Kris Mooney) so as to cast shadows on the actors and actions below. I was a little disappointed by the elimination of many of the passages from the so-called Hecate scenes, especially since the witches and their ever-present cauldron otherwise play such a central role in this production. Another slight disappointment was the beheading of Macbeth’s corpse at the very end of the production, which prompted confused laughter from a portion of the audience as the special effect looked rather cheap and came across as almost comical, which did not appear to be the production’s intention.
Review by Ema Vyroubalová, Trinity College Dublin.
Henry Fuseli’s 19th c. painting of the three witches
The 20th Meeting of the Irish Renaissance Seminar will be hosted at Maynooth University, Department of English, on Saturday 10th November 2018, in the Iontas Building.
The theme is “Earth Songs: Eco-Criticism and Early Modern Studies”
1.30 Welcome / Light Lunch
2.00 Paper Session I:
Dr Kevin De Ornellas (University of Ulster): “‘Great is the beauty of Creatures’: Godfrey Goodman Praising Animals Praising God”
Professor Pat Palmer (Department of English, NUI Maynooth): “Earthen Bodies: The Chthonic in Country House Poetry”
Chair: Dr Edel Semple (Department of English, University College Cork)
3.00 Tea / Coffee
3.15 Keynote Paper
Dr Deana Rankin (Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, Department of English & Drama, Royal Holloway), “Border Disputes”
Chair: Professor Andy Murphy, School of English, Trinity College Dublin
4.15 Paper Session II:
“Dramatising Denial: A Looking Glass for London and new directions for ecocriticism”: Dr Gwilym Jones (Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, University of Westminster)
Chair: Professor Marie-Louise Coolhan (Department of English, NUI Galway)
5.15 IRS Discussion / Business meeting, followed by wine reception to mark 20th anniversary.
The organisers, Dr Stephen O’Neill and Professor Pat Palmer, acknowledge the support of Maynooth University Conference & Workshop Fund, and Maynooth University Department of English.
