Books in the Shakespeare and the Stage series

Double Shakespeares examines contemporary performances of Shakespeare plays that employ the ';emotional realist' traditions of acting that were codified by Stanislavski over a century ago. These performances recognize the inescapable doubleness of realism: that the actor may aspire to be the character but can never fully do so. This doubleness troubled the late-nineteenth-century actors and theorists who first formulated realist modes of acting; and it equally troubles theorists and theatre practitioners today. The book first looks at contemporary performances that foreground the doubleness of the actor's body, particularly through cross-dressing. It then examines narratives of Shakespearean rehearsalboth fictional representations of rehearsal in film and video, and eye-witness narratives of actual rehearsalsand how they show us the process by which the actor does or does not ';become' the character. And, finally, it looks at modern performances that ';frame' Shakespeare's play as a play-within-a-play, showing the audience both the character in the Shakespeare play-within and the actor in the frame-play acting that character.

In Shakespeare's Dramatic Persons, Travis Curtright examines the influence of the classical rhetorical tradition on early modern theories of acting in a careful study of and selection from Shakespeare's most famous characters and successful plays. Curtright demonstrates that ';personation'the early modern term for playing a roleis a rhetorical acting style that could provide audiences with lifelike characters and action, including the theatrical illusion that dramatic persons possess interiority or inwardness.Shakespeare's Dramatic Persons focuses on major characters such as Richard III, Katherina, Benedick, and Iago and ranges from Shakespeare's early to late work, exploring particular rhetorical forms and how they function in five different plays. At the end of this study, Curtright envisions how Richard Burbage, Shakespeare's best actor, might have employed the theatrical convention of directly addressing audience members.Though personation clearly differs from the realism aspired to in modern approaches to the stage, Curtright reveals how Shakespeare's sophisticated use and development of persuasion's arts would have provided early modern actors with their own means and sense of performing lifelike dramatic persons.

This collection of essays by both theater scholars and practitioners examines the political and aesthetic consequences of the marriage of Shakespearean text and realist performance style, considering productions ranging from the early twentieth century to 2016.

Shakespeare in the Light convenes an accomplished group of scholars, actors, and teachers to celebrate the legacy of American Shakespeare Center's founder, Ralph Alan Cohen. Each essay pivots off a production at the ASC's Blackfriars Playhouse to explore the performance of Shakespeare's plays under their original theatrical conditions.

This collection features nine essays that explore how the material conditions of the early modern English stage shaped the theater. Topics range from the simulation of pregnant bodies by boy actors (and the effects of those simulations) to how bruises created by make-up might have been used on stage

This collection of essays by both theatre scholars and practitioners examines the political and aesthetic consequences of the marriage of Shakespearean text and realist performance style, considering productions ranging from the early twentieth century to 2016.

This collection features nine essays that explore how the material conditions of the early modern English stage shaped the theater. Topics range from the simulation of pregnant bodies by boy actors (and the effects of those simulations) to how bruises created by make-up might have been used on stage

Shakespeare's Auditory Worlds examines special listening situations like overhearing, eavesdropping, and asides; it explores complex relationships between sound and sight, dialogue and blocking, non-English languages, and non-verbal relationships inherent in noise, sounds, and music, ending with a discussion with ASC Actors.

Like a King argues that strategic casting positions Shakespeare's histories as spaces for American political discourse. Drawing from the archive and the rehearsal room, the book examines productions of Richard II, Henry V and King John in the renaissance and the twenty-first century.