Early Modern Liveness: Mediating Presence in Text, Stage and Screen

by Danielle Rosvally (Editor), Donovan Sherman (Editor)

Overview

What does it mean for early modern theatre to be 'live'? How have audiences over time experienced a sense of 'liveness'? This collection extends discussions of liveness to works from the 16th and 17th centuries, both in their initial incarnations and contemporary adaptations. Drawing on theatre and performance studies, as well as media theory, this volume uses the concept of liveness to consider how early modern theatre – including non-Western and non-traditional performance – employs embodiment, materiality, temporality and perception to impress on its audience a sensation of presence.

The volume's contributors adopt varying approaches and cover a range of topics from material and textual studies, to early modern rehearsal methods, to digital and VR theatre, to the legacy of Shakespearean performance in global theatrical repertoires. This collection uses both early modern and contemporary performance practices to challenge our understanding of live performance. Productions and adaptions discussed include the Royal Shakespeare Company's Dream (2021), CREW's Hands on Hamlet (2017), Kit Monkman's Macbeth (2018), Arslanköy Theatre Company's Kraliçe Lear (2019), and a season of productions by the Original Practice Shakespeare Festival.

Early Modern Liveness looks beyond theatrical events as primary sites of interpretive authority and examines the intimate and ephemeral experience of encountering early modern theatre in its diverse manifestations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350318489
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	01/26/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Danielle Rosvally is Clinical Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo, USA.

Donovan Sherman is Associate Professor of English at Seton Hall University, USA.
Danielle Rosvally is Clinical Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo, USA.
Donovan Sherman is Associate Professor of English at Seton Hall University, USA.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Danielle Rosvally (University at Buffalo, USA) and Donovan Sherman (Seton Hall University, USA)

Part One: Proximity
1. Liveness in Virtual Early Modern Theatre
Rebecca Bushnell (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
2. Impressions of Liveness in Shakespeare, at a Distance
Stephanie Shirilan (Syracuse University, USA)
3. Medium Specificity, Medium Convergence, and Aliveness in the Chromakey (2018) and Big Telly Zoom (2020) Macbeths
Thomas Cartelli (Muhlenberg College, USA)

Part Two: Performance
4. Liveness in VR and AR Shakespeare Adaptations
Aneta Mancewicz (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)
5. Alive in the (Early) Modern Repertory
Elizabeth E. Tavares (University of Alabama, USA)
6. Contemporary Turkish Shakespeares: New Breath to Old Lives
Murat Ögütcü (independent scholar, Turkey)
7. Death Draws Down our Curtain: Liveness Beyond Life in Early Modern Persianate Islam
Kenneth Molloy (Brown University, USA)
8. Signs of Liveness: The Blazing Star in Renaissance Drama
Gina M. Di Salvo (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA)
9. The Apparitional Audience: Prophesizing Live Collectives in Modern India and Early Modern England
Jonathan Gil Harris (Ashoka University, India)

Index