Irish Renaissance Seminar at Queen’s University Belfast

IRS

Queen’s University Belfast

Saturday 28 January 2023

12.00-12:45 Arrival

12:45-1:45 Welcome Ramona Wray (QUB)/Jane Grogan (UCD) and Opening Plenary

Andrew Murphy (TCD): ‘Shakespeare comes to Dublin: Culture and colonialism in eighteenth-century Ireland’, Chair: Ramona Wray (QUB)

1:45-2:45pm Marie Curie Projects at IRS

Emer McHugh (QUB), Maria Shmygol (University of Galway), Helen Newsome (UCD), Chair: Ann-Maria Walsh (QUB)

2:45-3:45 New work in Shakespearean Adaptation

Edel Semple (University College Cork), Stephen O’Neill (Maynooth University), Mark Thornton Burnett (QUB), Chair: Edel Lamb (QUB)

3:45-4:15pm Break

4:15-5:15pm PGR Projects at IRS

Hannah Gregg (QUB), Alan Waldron (Maynooth University), Annie Khabaza (UCD), Chair: Anna Graham (QUB)

5:15-6:15pm Closing Plenary

Lillie Arnott (QUB) ‘Witnessing Grief: Sight, Subjectivity and Gender in Early Modern Literature’, Chair: Mark Thornton Burnett (QUB)

6:15-7:30 Reception

For all enquiries on this meeting of the IRS, please contact Dr Ramona Wray.

“Shakespeare and Adaptation” series launch – online 9 December

booklaunchshakespeareadaptationDownload

Theatre: “Lost Lear” at the Dublin Theatre Festival

[Info from Dublin Theatre Festival website here.]

Lost Lear – Previews: 28-29 September 2022. Dates: 28 September – 8 October see DTF website for details.

All at once fast paced and thought-provoking, Lost Lear lands us into the world of Joy, a woman with dementia, who is being cared for through a method where people live inside an old memory.

Following the national and international tour of A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Dan Colley and his company have turned their sights on a very (very) loose adaptation of King Lear, examining the self and that part of us that’s inaccessible to others.

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?” — King Lear, Act I Scene IV

For ages 14+

Talking Theatre – 5th Oct, post-show, with director Dan Colley and members of the company.

Lost Lear will also run from 13th-15th October 2022 in Wicklow at the Mermaid Arts Centre.

Co-produced by Mermaid Arts Centre and Riverbank Arts Centre and funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and supported by Fishamble’s New Play Clinic.

Theatre: “The Comedy of Errors” by Pilgrim Players

The Pilgrim Players will perform The Comedy of Errors at Edmondstown House (aka The Bishop’s Palace) in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, this weekend 12-14th August 2022. 

The Pilgrim Players return for a third year to the bishop’s Palace, with another stellar cast of stage and screen (stars of Poldark, Bohemian Rhapsody, Shakespeare’s Globe, RSC and BAFTA award-winners among them) who will be performing for just 3 days in the grounds of the house. The whole community are invited for the outdoor festival performances.

Tickets and info on the Pilgrim Players website: www.pilgrimplayers.co.uk

Theatre: “The Tempest” by Rough Magic at Kilkenny Arts Festival

[From Kilkenny Arts Festival programme webpage here]

Dates: 3rd – 6th, 8th – 13th August 2022, at 8pm. Venue: outdoors in the Kilkenny Castle Parklands

From Rough Magic and Kilkenny Arts Festival, the award-winning team that brought you A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing, comes a new take on Shakespeare’s classic The Tempest, filled with magic, mischief, music and romance.

Shakespeare’s lyrical revenge fantasy comes to the Castle. Eleanor Methven, one of Ireland’s most celebrated actresses, takes on the iconic role of Prospero, the deposed ruler turned elemental sorcerer. The fury of the storm she conjures hurls her enemies onto her shores – but it also brings a sad young prince, to the delighted curiosity of her daughter Miranda. Is their attraction a trick of fate – or the spectacle and sorcery of the enchanted island? A dark comedy filled with magic, music, mischief and romance, told beneath the Kilkenny summer skies.

Book tickets on Kilkenny Arts Festival website.

Screening: “The Winter’s Tale” Branagh Theatre Live – encore

[Info from the ODEON Cinemas website.]

Due to phenomenal demand, The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare’s timeless tragicomedy of obsession and redemption, returns to cinemas this festive season. This beautifully reimagined production,co-directed by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh, features a remarkable cast including Dame Judi Dench as Paulina, alongside Tom Bateman, Jessie Buckley, Hadley Fraser, Miranda Raison and Sir Kenneth Branagh as Leontes.

King Leontes appears to have everything: power, wealth, a loving family and friends. But sexual jealousy sets in motion a chain of events with tragic consequences…This critically acclaimed production was the first in the hugely successful Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company Live season that was broadcast to cinemas from London’s Garrick Theatre over the course of a year in 2015.

Information on cinemas and dates/times is available on the Branagh Theatre Live website here.

View the trailer for the encore of The Winter’s Tale here.

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Theatre: “Measure for Measure” at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght

[Info from Civic Theatre website.]

Measure for Measure

Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Dublin
3rd – 7th December 2019

 

Set in Vienna, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure is a dark comedy in five acts and was written in the early 1600’s. Vienna is overrun with brothels and loose morality and when a young novice nun is compromised by a corrupt official, who offers to save her brother from execution in return for sex, she has no idea where to turn for help. When she threatens to expose him, he tells her that no one would believe her.

The themes run from religion, morality, virtue, sin, punishment, death, and atonement, with Shakespeare choosing moral justice to prevail over strict civil justice. Measure for Measure sheds a critical eye on the policing of society by a corrupt government and politics. Whether it be 1604 or 2019, this play has resonance in the 21st Century.

Presented by Liberties College, Bull Alley
Duration: 110 minutes. One interval.
Suitable for ages 14+

Tickets available from the Civic Theatre website.

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Free screening of Kaliyattam (based on Othello) – Indian Shakespeares project

As part of the Indian Shakespeares project at Queen’s University Belfast, a free screening of the 1997 Malayalam language film Kaliyattam (based on Shakespeare’s Othello) will be held on Friday 20th September.

The film with English subtitles will be screened at 3pm in QUB’s Lanyon Building, Room 0G/074, and will be followed by a Q&A with National Film Award-winning director Jayaraj.

For more on the Indian Shakespeares project and upcoming conference, see the project website here.

 

Women and Indian Shakespeares – conference CFP

CALL FOR PAPERS

Women and Indian Shakespeares:
Exploring cinema, translation, performance

30 October – 1 November 2019
Queen’s University, Belfast

 

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:

• Prof. Paromita Chakravarti (Jadavpur University)
• Ms. Bornila Chatterjee (filmmaker, The Hungry )
• Ms. Sangeeta Datta (filmmaker, Life Goes On )
• Dr. Sreedevi Nair (NSS College for Women)
• Prof. Jyotsna Singh (Michigan State University)
• Dr. Poonam Trivedi (formerly Delhi University)

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)

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