Stephen Purcell – författare

The White Devil is one of the great plays of the Jacobean era. In this vibrant Handbook, Stephen Purcell offers an in-depth, performance-focused exploration of John Webster's thrilling, unsettling and darkly comic tragedy. The Handbook includes:- a scene-by-scene commentary on the play as it unfolds on stage - an overview of the play's cultural context- excerpts from historical sources- case studies of four modern productions, featuring interviews with directors- an outline of key critical writings on the play, from the seventeenth century through to today.

What do audiences do as they watch a Shakespearean play? What makes them respond in the ways that they do? This book examines a wide range of theatrical productions to explore the practice of being a modern Shakespearean audience. It surveys some of the most influential ideas about spectatorship in contemporary performance studies, and analyses the strategies employed both in the texts themselves and by modern theatre practitioners to position audiences in particular ways.

What do audiences do as they watch a Shakespearean play? What makes them respond in the ways that they do? This book examines a wide range of theatrical productions to explore the practice of being a modern Shakespearean audience. It surveys some of the most influential ideas about spectatorship in contemporary performance studies, and analyses the strategies employed both in the texts themselves and by modern theatre practitioners to position audiences in particular ways.

Siblings Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) and John Philip Kemble (1757–1823) were the most famous British actors of the late-18th and early-19th centuries. Through their powerful acting and meticulous conceptualisation of Shakespeare’s characters and their worlds, they created iconic interpretations of Shakespeare’s major roles that live on in our theatrical and cultural memory. This book examines the actors’ long careers on the London stage, from Siddons’s debut in 1782 to Kemble’s retirement in 1817, encompassing Kemble’s time as theatre manager, when he sought to foreground their strengths as Shakespearean performers in his productions.Over the course of more than thirty years, Siddons and Kemble appeared opposite one another in many Shakespeare plays, including King John, Henry VIII, Coriolanus and Macbeth. The actors had to negotiate two major Shakespeare scandals: the staging of Vortigern – a fake Shakespearean play – in 1796 and the Old Price Riots of 1809, during which the audience challenged Siddons’s and Kemble’s perceived attempts to control Shakespeare.Fiona Ritchie examines the siblings’ careers, focusing on their collaborations, as well as placing Siddons’s and Kemble’s Shakespeare performances in the context of contemporary 18th- and 19th-century drama. The volume not only offers a detailed consideration of London theatre, but also explores the importance of provincial performance to the actors, notably in the case of Hamlet – a role in which both appeared across Britain and in Ireland.

Yukio Ninagawa (1935–2016) was Japan's foremost director of Shakespeare whose productions were acclaimed around the world. His work was lauded for its spectacular imagery, its inventive use of Japanese iconography and its striking fusion of Eastern and Western theatre traditions.Over a career spanning six decades, Ninagawa directed 31 of Shakespeare's plays, many of them, including Hamlet, on multiple occasions. His productions of Macbeth, The Tempest, Pericles, Twelfth Night and Cymbeline became seminal events in world Shakespeare production during the last 30 years.This is the first English-language book dedicated exclusively to Ninagawa’s work. Featuring an overview of his extraordinary output, this study considers his Shakespearean work within the context of his overall career. Individual chapters cover Ninagawa’s approach Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, in particular his landmark productions of Macbeth and Medea, and his eight separate productions of Hamlet. The volume includes a detailed analysis of the Sai-no-Kuni Shakespeare Series – in which Ninagawa set out to stage all of Shakespeare’s plays in his hometown of Saitama, north of Tokyo. Written by Conor Hanratty, who studied with Ninagawa for over a year, it offers a unique and unprecedented glimpse into the work and approach of one of the world’s great theatre directors.

This volume examines the pioneering work of Phyllida Lloyd, whose all-female productions have revolutionised how Shakespeare’s plays are performed in 21st-century Britain.Following Lloyd from her first Shakespeare in Cheltenham in 1986, this book explores her radical casting practices and the importance of her collaborative rehearsal approach. While her 2003 all-female Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare’s Globe was met with both enthusiasm and resistance, it was her production of Julius Caesar in 2012 at the Donmar Warehouse which sent shock waves through the theatre industry. Alongside Henry IV in 2014 and a new production of The Tempest, Lloyd produced these plays together to create the Donmar Trilogy of 2016 to wide acclaim, a cultural landmark moment in which non-traditional casting had become mainstream.The book explores Lloyd’s ongoing relationships with major stars – Harriet Walter, Janet McTeer, Meryl Streep – and includes new interviews with both Lloyd and actors she has worked with across the last 40 years. It argues that Lloyd’s megamusical Mamma Mia! had a crucial impact on her directing practice, helping to pave the way for the Donmar Shakespeares. Ultimately Schafer and Bullen show that Lloyd’s career-long commitment to creating disturbance and diversity through her work has opened up what she calls the ‘crown jewels’ of British theatre – Shakespeare – to new audiences.

Drawing on interview material, current scholarship and documents from the Ku Na'uka and SPAC archives, this book is the first major appraisal of Miyagi's 30-year career as one of Japan's leading directors of Shakespeare. It provides an in-depth critique of Miyagi's approach to directing Shakespeare through studies of his highly visual and physical renditions of Hamlet (1990/2008/2021), Macbeth (2001), Othello (2005/2018), A Midsummer Night's Dream (2011) and The Winter's Tale (2016). The book also discusses recent shifts in Miyagi's direction as a result of the global pandemic, and includes interviews with Miyagi, Micari (lead actress and long-time collaborator), and Hiroko Tanakawa (Miyagi's music director), making it a valuable resource for anyone interested in contemporary Japanese theatre and Shakespeare.Satoshi Miyagi (1959-) rose to prominence in Japanese theatre in the early 1990s with a series of visually striking adaptations of classical European and Asian plays. This study examines how, working with his Tokyo based Ku Na'uka Theatre Company, he developed his renowned 'mover/speaker' acting method as a means of exploring the non-linguistic aspects of theatre. It details how, in 2007, he replaced Tadashi Suzuki as the artistic director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre (SPAC), where he set to work on what he terms 'the restoration of poetry' and 'weak theatre,' in sum an aesthetics that challenges the privileging of masculinity in East/West theatre traditions. Shakespeare in the Theatre: Satoshi Miyagi demonstrates how Miyagi's productions have toured worldwide to great acclaim, earning him the reputation of a director capable of shedding new light on intercultural theatre, Shakespeare and gender, and the power of language.

This book examines the work of acclaimed director Tina Packer, founder of Shakespeare & Company, whose ground-breaking approach to performing Shakespeare has made her company among the most vibrant and enduring Shakespeare theatres in America.Tina Packer directed her first Shakespeare play at London Academy for Music and Dramatic Art in 1971. More than 50 years later she continues to direct and teach at Shakespeare & Company, which she founded in Lenox, Massachusetts in 1978. Drawing on new interviews with the original casts and creative teams as well as Tina Packer herself, this book is the first comprehensive analysis of all of her professional Shakespeare productions in their cultural and historical context.Over a career that spans 5 decades, Packer has directed or acted in virtually all of Shakespeare's plays, along with many other classical and contemporary works. As artistic director she guided her company through times of expansion as well as belt-tightening, driven by her conviction that the purpose of theatre is to heal and that to fulfil that purpose, acting must tell the truth. With in-depth case studies of 12 of her most significant productions, Katharine Goodland offers a clear account of Packer’s work and contribution to Shakespearean theatre in America while illuminating the embedded nature of regional Shakespeare in communities across the United States.

Kathryn Hunter is one of the most distinctive performers on the modern stage. Her shapeshifting abilities have seen her play Shakespearean roles as diverse as King Lear, Richard III, Katharina, Cleopatra, Puck, and Timon of Athens. Her role as the witches in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth introduced her distinctive approach to Shakespeare to a wider audience, winning her the 2021 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress. She is also an accomplished Shakespearean director, having directed productions for theatres including Shakespeare’s Globe and the Royal Shakespeare Company. This study situates her Shakespearean work within the context of her wider career, including her Olivier award-winning work with Complicite and her frequent collaborations with Peter Brook. It is based on a series of nine interviews with Hunter that were conducted over Zoom during the 2020 lockdown, and draws upon archival material from Shakespeare’s Globe, the RSC and elsewhere.

Co-authored by the resident dramaturg at Shakespeare Theatre Company and a long-time scholarly consultant, this book chronicles how a small repertory troupe at the Folger Theatre on Capitol Hill became an internationally renowned company performing in a lavish, multi-venue performing arts centre in downtown Washington, D.C.The artistic vision and business acumen of Michael Kahn, the founding Artistic Director, largely catalyzed this transformation, but so too did the forces of neoliberalism and, more recently, globalization and new media. Accordingly, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company not only examines directorial decision-making but also 3 decades of social and economic change in the nation’s capital, from the complexities of gentrification to the arts policies of successive administrations.In addition to discussions of directorial practice, this book examines the ambivalence of American theatre artists toward their British cultural inheritance. Analyses of representative productions and interviews with Kahn and his British successor, Simon Godwin, illuminate this complex relationship: one that aspires to a cosmopolitan Anglophilia while positioning classically trained American actors as worthy rivals to their counterparts at the RSC and the National Theatre of Great Britain.

This analysis of the Stratford Festival examines the full history of one of the largest and oldest dedicated centres for the performance of Shakespeare in North America.In English-speaking Canada, the Festival has become the unofficial national theatre, drawing both praise and criticism. Dividing its history into three distinct periods, the volume begins with the foundation of the company, moving through its middle years of expansion and securing stability, and ending with an exploration of staging Shakespeare in the 21st century. Through case studies of productions, covering each artistic director from Tyrone Guthrie to Antoni Cimolino, it highlights issues of national identity but also the relationship between actor and audience on the Festival’s unique thrust stage. It not only explores the work of international stars such as Christopher Plummer, but also that of longstanding company members William Hutt and Martha Henry, emphasizing the Festival's collective spirit.This book argues that the Stratford Festival holds an influential position in the theatre world generally and in the Shakespeare performance environment specifically. Initially this was because of the original stage built for its opening, but increasingly it has been due to the way that it has used Shakespeare’s work to articulate complex questions about identity and utilized technology to reach new audiences. The Festival and its collaborative working methods grew out of a particular social and political climate, and when the actors and directors who trained at the Festival took their training and its influences elsewhere, they spread its impact.

The first dedicated historical study of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, this book explores the troupe’s four major Shakespearean works over the past four decades.The Reduced Shakespeare Company represent an American tale of how a small-scale, open-air troupe specialising in fast-paced, irreverent reductions of prominent topics have, since their formation in 1981, gradually expanded into a global theatre brand whose first play, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), ran continuously for nine years in London’s West End and has been translated into thirty-eight languages.Drawing on previously unexamined archival material, as well as author interviews with the company’s five key players and attendance at rehearsals and performances in America and Britain, this book stands as the first dedicated study of this other RSC, presenting a critical analysis of the company’s signature blend of audience interaction, metatheatre, parody, pop culture references, Shakespearean intertextuality and vaudevillian humour.Each chapter is arranged to address a specific period within the RSC’s history of Shakespearean adaptation, offering a detailed exposition of their four major Shakespearean works over the past four decades. The book’s epilogue considers their influence and legacy, submits a blueprint for reduction and contextualises the company within the ecosystem of contemporary performance.

Glen Byam Shaw was a pivotal but overlooked figure in the development of Shakespearean performance in 20th century Britain. This book serves as the first full analysis of Shaw’s work as Director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre across the 1950s as he laid the groundwork for what became the Royal Shakespeare Company. Drawing on interviews with Shaw’s contemporaries and material from Shaw’s own notebooks, it offers an in-depth analysis of Shaw’s time in Stratford through the lens of his productions. Where Shaw’s contemporaries have been extensively studied (Michael Redgrave, Peggy Ashcroft, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Peter Hall, Peter Brook et al), the innately self-deprecating Shaw has managed to avoid close examination. Thus a key figure, and era, in Shakespeare performance history has been left in the shadows. This book sheds light on that transformative time for the theatre in Stratford and Shaw’s role in transforming it. In doing so it presents a revisionist history of the Royal Shakespeare Company, locating in Shaw's work as director of the theatre the origins of many of its principles, practices and approaches later claimed by Peter Hall as his own 'foundational' innovations for the RSC.Shaw’s unique production practices and approaches, captured in the notebooks he kept on every play he directed, allow us to read his thoughts in his own words. Drawing on these notebooks, which have never been transcribed or published, this book gives us an unparalleled insight into the actual practices of a director as he’s working, in a way never before explored or examined.

Shakespeare in the Theatre: Mark Rylance at the GlobeEach volume in the Shakespeare in the Theatre series focuses on a director or theatre company who has made a significant contribution to Shakespeare production, identifying the artistic and political/social contexts of their work. The series introduces readers to the work of significant theatre directors and companies whose Shakespeare productions have been transformative in our understanding of his plays in performance. Each volume examines a single figure or company, considering their key productions, rehearsal approaches and their work with other artists.Since its opening in the late 1990s, the reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre has made an indelible impression on the contemporary British theatre scene. This book explores the theatre’s first decade of productions under the pioneering leadership of Sir Mark Rylance. Drawing upon an extensive range of material from the theatre’s archive, interviews with Globe practitioners, and Rylance’s own personal archive, this book argues that the Rylance era was a ground-breaking and important period of recent theatre history. It concludes with an in-depth interview with Rylance himself. The book gives a unique insight into Rylance’s practice and impact, and will be of interest to anyone studying Shakespeare in performance.Stephen Purcell is Associate Professor of English at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on the performance of the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries on the modern stage and screen, and his publications include the books Popular Shakespeare and Shakespeare and Audience in Practice. He also directs for the open-air theatre company The Pantaloons.Series Editors: Bridget Escolme, Queen Mary University of London, UK, Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame, USA and Farah Karim-Cooper, Shakespeare’s Globe, London ,UK.

Shakespeare in the Theatre: Mark Rylance at the GlobeEach volume in the Shakespeare in the Theatre series focuses on a director or theatre company who has made a significant contribution to Shakespeare production, identifying the artistic and political/social contexts of their work. The series introduces readers to the work of significant theatre directors and companies whose Shakespeare productions have been transformative in our understanding of his plays in performance. Each volume examines a single figure or company, considering their key productions, rehearsal approaches and their work with other artists.Since its opening in the late 1990s, the reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre has made an indelible impression on the contemporary British theatre scene. This book explores the theatre’s first decade of productions under the pioneering leadership of Sir Mark Rylance. Drawing upon an extensive range of material from the theatre’s archive, interviews with Globe practitioners, and Rylance’s own personal archive, this book argues that the Rylance era was a ground-breaking and important period of recent theatre history. It concludes with an in-depth interview with Rylance himself. The book gives a unique insight into Rylance’s practice and impact, and will be of interest to anyone studying Shakespeare in performance.Stephen Purcell is Associate Professor of English at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on the performance of the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries on the modern stage and screen, and his publications include the books Popular Shakespeare and Shakespeare and Audience in Practice. He also directs for the open-air theatre company The Pantaloons.Series Editors: Bridget Escolme, Queen Mary University of London, UK, Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame, USA and Farah Karim-Cooper, Shakespeare’s Globe, London ,UK.

The original Blackfriars closed its doors in the 1640s, ending over half-a-century of performances by men and boys. In 2001, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, it opened once again. The reconstructed Blackfriars, home to the American Shakespeare Center, represents an old playhouse for the new millennium and therefore symbolically registers the permanent revolution in the performance of Shakespeare. Time and again, the industry refreshes its practices by rediscovering its own history. This book assesses how one American company has capitalised on history and in so doing has forged one of its own to become a major influence in contemporary Shakespearean theatre.