Past event
Renaissance Academic Drama and the Popular Stage
We are pleased to announce that the Renaissance Academic Drama and the Popular Stage conference will now be taking place online. To register, please email [email protected].
Keynote speakers:
Professor Laurie Maguire (Oxford)
Professor Sarah Knight (Leicester)
With talks and screenings of performances directed by:
Professor Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg)
Perry Mills (Edward's Boys)
Scholarship on early modern drama often keeps the research areas of academic and popular drama separate from one another, when in fact focusing on the relationship between them would greatly improve our understanding of the subject. The conference will therefore aim to provide the opportunity for scholars to consider further the convergence of these traditions by hosting academic work relevant to either, or with a particular focus on their interaction.
The conference is interdisciplinary, being organised by the School of English in collaboration with the School of Classics. This association is particularly relevant to the topic of the conference, and mirrors the significant connections between ancient and early modern drama that developed through translation, adaptation, and imitation.
Thursday 11 June
10:30am: Opening remarks
Panel 1 – Rome on Academic and Popular Stages
Jillian Luke (University of Edinburgh), "Friends, Romans, Crocodiles: Roman masculinity on the English stage"
Cristiano Ragni, (Università degli Studi di Torino), "'Forsan quietos': Religious Scepticism in William Gager's and Christopher Marlowe's Dido"
11:30am: Break
12:00pm: Panel 2 -- Greek Tragedy in the English Renaissance
Cressida Ryan (University of Oxford), "Christus Patiens as translation and performance"
Angelica Vedelago (Università degli Studi di Padova), "'Pop' Academia: The Crosscontamination Between Popular and Academic Drama in Thomas Watson's Sophoclis Antigone"
13:00pm: Lunch
14:00pm: Performance in practice:
Perry Mills (The Edward's Boys, Director), "Education, Youth and Nostalgia: Edward's Boys Playing 'Academically'", with video excerpts from Dido Queen of Carthage (Marlowe), Wit and Science (Redford), Grobiana's Nuptials (May), Summer's Last Will and Testament (Nashe), and When Paul's Boys Met Edward's Boys (Carwood/Mills)
15:00pm: Break
15:30pm: Panel 3 -- Performing the Academic, Performing the Popular
Daniel Blank (Harvard University), "Acting Like Professionals: Academic Drama in Parts"
Isabel Dollar (University of St Andrews), "Ovid for Sale -- Changeable and Exchangeable Bodies in Bellamy's Iphis & Lyly's Gallathea"
Elizabeth Sandis (Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, UoL), "Violas before and after Shakespeare: Cross-dressing drama in Italy and England"
17:00pm: Break
17:30pm: Keynote lecture:
Professor Laurie Maguire (University of Oxford), "Classical and Commercial Drama in Print in Sixteenth-Century England"
18:45pm: End of the first day
Friday 12 June
10:30am: Panel 4 -- The School of Drama: Didactic Values of Academic and Popular Plays
Orlagh Davies (University of St Andrews), "'This comes of putting Girls to a Boarding School': female boarding schools on the seventeenth-century stage"
Neil Rhodes (University of St Andrews), "Two Versions of Prodigality in SixteenthCentury Academic Drama: Acolastus, The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, and Love's Labour's Lost"
Lorna Wallace (University of Stirling), "The Educative Value of Dramatic Spectacle in Joseph Simons' Theoctistus (1624)"
12:00pm: Break
12:30pm: Performance in practice:
Professor Elisabeth Dutton (University of Fribourg), "Reflecting Narcissus: on filming an early modern student panto". Screening of Narcissus (EDOX), followed by discussion with director Prof. Elisabeth Dutton.
13:30pm: Lunch
14:30pm: Panel 5 -- Intersections of Popular and Academic Drama
Moira Donald (University of Exeter), "The chronology of cross-fertilisation. Coincidence or causality?"
Maddalena Repetto (Università degli Studi di Genova), "Inspiration and Imitation in Academic and Popular Drama: A Comparison between Nero and The Tragedy of Nero"
Harriet Archer (University of St Andrews), "Gorboduc on Fire: Pyropoetics and the Popular"
16:00pm: Break
16:30pm: Keynote lecture:
Professor Sarah Knight (University of Leicester), "Turning your library to a wardrobe"
17:45pm: Closing Remarks
18:00pm: End
With grateful thanks to:
Society for Renaissance Studies
The Centre for the Public Understanding of Greek and Roman Drama, St Andrews
The Medieval and Renaissance Research Group, St Andrews School of English
GRADskills/CAPOD, St Andrews
St Leonard's Postgraduate College Community Fund, St Andrews
Organisers:
Elena Spinelli (University of St Andrews) and Jonathan Gardner (University of St Andrews)