We invite participants to submit work in any format that makes sense to them and helps them address the questions and issues that most interest them. This may include (but is certainly not limited to):
- traditional conference papers or provocations;
- rehearsal or teaching diaries;
- lesson plans or sample syllabus;
- rehearsal or workshop exercises;
- creative or reflective writing.
Out of respect for everyone’s time, we encourage you to keep all submissions to a maximum of 2500 words (or approx. 15 minutes of audio/video content). We will also ask that you include an additional framing statement, to give some context for your submission and your choice of format. This can be very brief, up to a maximum of 500 words.
In creating or curating the work you’d like to share with the workshop, we ask you to consider the following framing questions:
- How do we ‘do’ early modern plays in ways that are ethical and intersectional, while acknowledging them as culturally valuable texts?
- What are best practices for rehearsal rooms and classrooms undertaking problematic and difficult texts? Which models work, and why?
- What are our responsibilities to our students, audiences, and readers as we engage in narratives of trauma and violence?
- ‘Can we move beyond our still-pervasive urge to sanctify the Bard as politically flawless[…]?’ (Solga 2009)
We also encourage you to take account of the following readings, which will provide a foundation for our explorations:
Barker, Roberta. “A freshly creepy reality: Jacobean tragedy and realist acting on the contemporary stage” in Pascale Aebischer and Kathryn Prince (eds.), Performing Early Modern Drama Today. Cambridge, CUP, 2012, pp. 121-41.
Mendoza, Kirsten N. “Sexual Violence, Trigger Warnings, and the Early Modern Classroom” in Hilary Eklund and Wendy Beth Hyman (eds.), Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2019, pp. 97-105.
If it’s not already familiar to you, we also recommend Kimberlé Crenshaw’s TEDtalk on her term ‘intersectionality’. Given that the concept is often appropriated or misused, we feel it’s important to attend to Crenshaw’s own definition and clarifications.
Based on participant interest, we will be working primarily with Measure for Measure and Titus Andronicus as starting points for the workshop. However, we anticipate that we will make reference to other texts as part of our discussion and activities in Denver, so please don’t feel restricted by these plays in crafting your submission.