Shakespeare: Actors and Audiences

Description

Shakespeare: Actors and Audiences brings together the voices of those who make productions of Shakespeare come to life. It shines a spotlight on the relationship between actors and audiences and explores the interplay that makes each performance unique. We know much about theatre in Shakespeare’s time but very little about the audiences who attended his plays. Even today the audience’s voice remains largely ignored. This volume places the role of the audience at the centre of how we understand Shakespeare in performance. Part One offers an overview of the best current audience research and provides a critical framework for the interviews and testimony of leading actors, theatre makers and audience members that follow in Part Two, including Juliet Stevenson and Emma Rice. Shakespeare: Actors and Audiences offers a fascinating insight into the world of theatre production and of the relationship between actor and audience that lies at the heart of theatre-making. Cover HalfTitle Series Title Copyright Content List of Illustrations List of Contributors Foreword Sarah Frankcom Acknowledgements Introduction Fiona Banks Part One Actor and Audience: A Theoretical Framework 1 Who Are We Talking About When We Talk About ‘the Audience’? Stephen Purcell 2 Shakespeare’s Audiences Charles Whitney 3 ‘Do it, England!’: The Actor and the Audience in Hamlet Jeremy Lopez 4 Audiences: The Architecture of Engagement Susan Bennett 5 What Makes a Theatregoer? Habitus,Identity and Interest Development in Adolescent Audiences to Shakespeare Matthew Reason 6 ‘All Eyes’: Experience,Spectacle and the Inclusive Audience in Flute Theatre’s The Tempest Robert Shaughnessy Part Two Actors and Audiences: In Their Own Words Introduced by Fiona Banks 7 Hamlet 8 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 9 Twelfth Night Index