Performing Environments Site-Specificity in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama

by Bennett, Susan; Polito, Mary

• ISBN13: 9781137320162
• ISBN10: 1137320168
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-06-25
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Performing Environments is an original and important collection examining site specificity in a diverse range of medieval and early modern performance cultures. The chapters take up theories of site specificity more commonly deployed in the study of contemporary work in order to raise new questions and suggest innovative approaches to the study of performance in the historical past.

The book provides an introduction to site specific theories as well as a review of the recent 'geographical turn' in medieval and early modern scholarship that frames the studies for both novice and expert readers. Individual chapters explore both theatrical performances and paratheatrical events through the lens of site specificity; together they not only interrogate the role and impact of place on experiences of production and reception, but also demonstrate how genealogies of performance might challenge more conventional literary periodization.

List of Contributors:
Patricia Badir, Susan Bennett, Sarah Crover, Elisabeth Dutton, Jim Ellis, Helen Ostovich, Vimala C. Pasupathi, Mary Polito, Joseph Rodriguez, Julie Sanders, Amy Scott, Kim Solga, Kevin Teo and Clare Wright.

Author Biography

Susan Bennett is University Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is widely published across a variety of theatre and performance studies topics, and her previous books include Theatre and Museums (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception (1997) and Performing Nostalgia: Shifting Shakespeare and the Contemporary Past (1996).

Mary Polito is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary, Canada. She has published on early modern theatre and performance culture, on Shakespeare in the present and recently co-edited (with Jacqueline Jenkins) a newly discovered seventeenth-century play manuscript for The Malone Society.

Table of Contents

Thinking Site: an Introduction, Susan Bennett and Mary Polito
PART I: BUILDING FRAMEWORKS
1. 'The whole past, the whole time': Untimely Matter and the Playing Spaces of York, Patricia Badir
2. John Heywood, Henry, and Hampton Court Palace, Elisabeth Dutton
3. Playing The Changeling Architecturally, Kim Solga
PART II: TRAVEL AND TYPOGRAPHY
4. Performing Folk at Kenilworth, Jim Ellis
5. Knights and Daze: The Place of Romance in the Queen's Men's Repertory, Helen Ostovich
6. Geographies of Performance in the Early Modern Midlands, Julie Sanders
PART III: PSYCHIC SPACES
7. Mapping Guild Conflict in the York Passion Plays, Kevin Teo
8. Body, Site and Memory in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, Clare Wright
9. A Taste of High Life at Elvetham: Elizabethan Progresses and the Rural Consumption of Royal Neverwheres, Sarah Crover
PART IV: CROSSING BOUNDARIES
10. With the grace off God at th'entryng off the Brigge: Crown versus Town and the Giant of London Bridge
11. Lydgate's Triumphal Entry of Henry VI, Joseph Rodriguez
12. Cymbeline and the Politics/Poetics of Mobility, Amy Scott
13. Locating The Valiant Scot, Vimala C. Pasupathi
Bibliography
Index