It's 2024; Why Shakespeare (a symposium)
From October 30 - November 1, 2024, the University of Regina Theatre Department will be presenting an adaptation of William Shakespeare's as You Like It. The production will feature students from the second and third year BFA cohorts and is being adapted and directed by Kathryn Bracht. In conjunction with this production on October 31 and November 1 the department will be organizing and hosting It's 2024, Why Shakespeare? [A Symposium].
The genesis of this symposium stems from scholarly and creative research being undertaken by various faculty within the Theatre Department including my own research that has, as you know, focused on Shakespeare, Shakespeare festivity and how Shakespeare festivals make meaning. Shakespeare is unique and occupies simultaneous placements in high, middle, and low brow cultures and while, every year, he remains the most produced playwright in Canada, the United States and England his reception in 2024 is often more critical than in the past. In 2021, writing for School Library Journal, Amanda MacGregor argued “Shakespeare's works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, antisemitism, and misogynoir [and asks the radical question] “…Is Shakespeare more valuable or relevant than myriad other authors who have written masterfully about anguish, love, history, comedy, and humanity in the past 400-odd years?” Commenting on the pre-rehearsal work done to the texts at Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan Carol Greyeyes asked, “If you have to do all that work to make the plays palatable to an audience why not just do plays that are palatable?”
Simply put, in our time Shakespeare has more cultural capital than any other playwright, poet or writer of the Elizabethan (or any other) Age. This was not always the case, in the mid-eighteenth-century Shakespeare was all but forgotten, but that is not where we find ourselves today. This symposium aims to disquiet and problematize the central (and at times suffocating) role of Shakespeare (and his plays) in our contemporary world while at the same time reimagining possibilities and appreciating Shakespeare’s literary and dramatic accomplishments and cultural appeal. The symposium aims to bring together literary and theatre history scholars, theatre practitioners, students, and members of the public to explore the challenges and the opportunities presented by the continued emphasis that educational institutions, theatres, and other societal agencies place on Shakespeare. While the key question will remain “why Shakespeare” areas of interest that may be addressed, though not solved, during the symposium include - multiple Shakespeare(s) and multiple meanings; how do you solve a problem like Shakespeare(s)?; reading versus playing Shakespeare(s); Shakespeare(s) off stage and off the page and the public good; pop culture and Shakespeare(s); how did Shakespeare(s) come to be?; Shakespeare(s) of the future.
In keeping with the theme of disruptive practices the format of the symposium will also be somewhat different – the symposium will be built around four broadly themed provocations - literature, performance, emergent practice and cultural capital. We would then invite a scholar/artist whose work engages with one of the provocations and ask them to become chair of that provocation/session and to construct a panel to engage with said provocation.
Provocation (literature)
The literary prompt comes from Amanda MacGregor’s essay from the online edition of School Library Journal;
“Shakespeare's works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir…Is Shakespeare more valuable or relevant than myriad other authors who have written masterfully about anguish, love, history, comedy, and humanity in the past 400-odd years?” (January 4, 2021)
Provocation (performance)
The performance prompt comes from an interview with Carol Greyeyes;
“If you have to do all that work to make the plays palatable to an audience why not just do plays that are palatable?”
Provocation (cultural capital) - Presented by C-SET
The cultural capital prompt is informed by an interview with Yvette Nolan:
In an interview in the summer of 2022 Yvette Nolan recalled learning Shakespeare because her mother’s belief was “once you have power over the words you have power…once you put those words together in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” There are numerous programs across North America that serve at risk youth, prison populations and other marginalized communities that use Shakespeare’s plays as the foundation of the program because once you have power over the words you have power.
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Peter Kuling was born in Prince Albert and grew up in Saskatoon. Currently he is an Associate Professor at the University of Guelph where his research focuses on early modern and Canadian theatre as well as performance theory across theatrical adaptations, digital media, video games, professional sports, and queer history. He has co-edited special issues of Canadian Theatre Review on Digital Performance, Theatre and Sports, and Drag as well as contributed to anthologies on Gender and Theatre, Shakespeare in Canada, and Theatre and Immigration. Most recently he has been working with SimWave VR on the creation and development of the Shakespeare VR project. Hamlet VR experience and Macbeth VR experience have been developed for high school, college and university students and went live in 2023. He is currently completing his first monograph on the subjects of Virtual Reality and Theatre/Performance/Interactivity. Other projects include an upcoming cirtical edition of Thomas Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West Parts 1 and 2 for Routledge and a long-lost French-Canadian Shakespearean Adaptation in a bilingual critical edition format for the University of Ottawa Press.
Martine Kei Green-Rogers is the Dean of the Theatre School at DePaul University (Chicago). Her dramaturgical productions include: The Greatest with the Louisville Orchestra, Toni Stone and Sweat at the Goodman; Silent Dancer at Salt Lake Acting Company, productions of King Hedley II, Radio Golf, Five Guys Named Moe, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Gem of the Ocean, Waiting for Godot, Iphigenia in Aulis, Seven Guitars, The Mountaintop, Home and Porgy and Bess at the Court Theatre (Chicago, IL); productions of Fences and One Man, Two Guvnors for the Pioneer Memorial Theatre; It’s Christmas, Carol!, The Book of Will, Shakespeare in Love, Hannah and the Dread Gazebo (Research Dramaturg), UniSon (Asst. Dramaturg), The Comedy of Errors, To Kill A Mockingbird, The African Company Presents Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Fences and the Play on! project translations of Comedy of Errors and The Two Noble Kinsmen for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland, OR); 10 Perfect and The Curious Walk of the Salamander as part of the Madison Repertory Theatre’s New Play Festival, and A Thousand Words as part of the WI Wrights New Play Festival. She was also the dramaturgical team for the remount of Jagged Little Pill on Broadway.
She has directed a staged reading of Adopting Aunt Tabitha for the Alley Theatre’s HYPE program and Venus and Adonis for the Classical Theatre Company, and productions of Much Ado About Nothing for Kenyon College, The Brothers Size for Ancram Opera House, and Sender for Denizen Theatre Company.
Her publications include the article "Talkbacks for ‘Sensitive Subject Matter’ Productions: The Theory and Practice" in the Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, Co-Author on “A New Noble Kinsmen: The Play On! Project and Making New Plays Out of Old” in Theatre History Studies, Co-Author on “Visual Dramaturgy: Problem Solver or Problem Maker in Contemporary Performance Creation” in Theatre/Practice, and Co-author on “Continuing the Conversation: Responses to Gabriela Serena Sanchez and Quiara Alegría Hudes” in Theatre Topics. Her most recent publication is the book Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance:Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity alongside co-editors Dr. DeRon S. Willams and Dr. Khalid Y. Long and published in May of 2023 by Bloomsbury.
Tentative Schedule
Wednesday October 30th
7:30 – University Theatre – Riddell Centre. Registration to the symposium includes a ticket to the opening night of As You Like It
Crush Space (outside the theatre) Riddell Centre. Join the cast, crew and creatives for a reception that marks opening night as well as the launch of the conference. **Cash Bar**
Thursday October 31st
8:30 – 8:55 – Morning Coffee – Crush Space
9:00 – 9:15 Welcome – Wes Pearce
9:15 – 10:15– Moderated discussion with some cast and creatives from As You Like It. Award winning playwright and U of R alumnus Daniel Macdonald is moderator.Panelists include: Kathryn Bracht, Sophia Williams, Emily Sorenson
10:30 – 12:00 – Provocation #1 – Shakespeare and Literature. Responding panelists include: Dr. Troni Grande (U of Regina), Dr. Garry Sherbert (U of Regina) and Dr. Dave Grey (U of Alberta) Dave Grey (U of Alberta)
12:00 – 1:00 – Lunch is on your own. A conversation with Daniel Macdonald on Shakespeare as springboard for new play development
1:45 – 3:15 – Provocation #2 – Shakespeare/Cultural Capital (organized by C-SET)
3:30 – Plenary Talk with Dr. Peter Kuling – VR and Shakespeare in the classroom
4:45 – End of Day
7:30 – University Theatre – Riddell Centre If you missed it last night catch the Theatre Department’s production of As You Like It
Friday November 1st
8:30 – 9:15 – Morning coffee - Crush Space
9:15 – 10:15 – Reading visual Shakespeare (an interactive partial provocation). Curated/created: Leanne Groeneveld, Slayte Prefontaine, Wes D Pearce.
10:30 – 12:00 Provocation #3 – Shakespeare and Performance. Responding Panelists: Christopher Bauer (U of Winnipeg), Jennifer Brewin (Globe Theatre), Anita Smith (Twenty-Fifth Street Theatre)
12:00 – 1:45 – Brown bag lunch with Plenary Speaker Dr. Martine Kei Green-Rogers. Brown bag lunch is included with registration Dr. Green-Rogers talk begins at 12:30
2:00 – 3:00 - “Staging this very question” Playwright Kate Besworth (Done/Undone) and director Anita Smith talk about the premiere production of Done/Undone at Saskatoon’s Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan’s 2024 season
3:00 – 3:15 – Exit, pursued by a bear
Registration - Coming soon at www.whyshakespeare2024.ca