Elizabethan Performance in North American Spaces

Explores the ways that North Americans have presented Elizabethan plays throughout history and the spaces in which they have chosen to present them.

The essays in this collection were selected from among papers delivered at the April 2003 Southeastern Theatre Conference s annual symposium held at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia. They focus on the uses and development of various North American spaces for the production of Elizabethan, primarily Shakespearean, plays. Contributors cover historical topics from the Elizabethan Revival to postmodern productions, performance genres from popular theatre to solo performance to the original practices movement, and performance spaces from reconstructed Elizabethan theatres to found space. Discussions of physical spaces inform issues of language, style, costume, and design.

Despite the wide variety of topics, the same concepts arise again and again: authenticity, minimalism of design, audience behavior and reaction, legitimizing factors of reconstruction and performance, and issues surrounding the variety of approaches to the production of Elizabethan theatre in North America. The volume concludes with an excerpt from the closing discussion by the conference s keynote speakers, Franklin J. Hildy and Vanessa Schomann.