1st Edition

Shakespeare and Feminist Performance Ideology on Stage

By Sarah Werner Copyright 2002
    144 Pages
    by Routledge

    144 Pages
    by Routledge

    How do performances of Shakespeare change the meanings of the plays?
    In this controversial new book, Sarah Werner argues that the text of a Shakespeare play is only one of the many factors that give a performance its meaning. By focusing on The Royal Shakespeare Company, Werner demonstrates how actor training, company management and gender politics fundamentally affect both how a production is created and the interpretations it can suggest.
    Werner concentrates particularly on:
    The influential training methods of Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenburg
    The history of the RSC Women's Group
    Gale Edwards' production of The Taming of the Shrew
    She reveals that no performance of Shakespeare is able to bring the plays to life or to realise the playwright's intentions without shaping them to mirror our own assumptions.
    By examining the ideological implications of performance practices, this book will help all interested in Shakespeare's plays to explore what it means to study them in performance.

    Introduction; Chapter 1 The ideologies of acting and the performance of women; Chapter 2 Punching Daddy, or the politics of company politics; Chapter 3 The Taming of the Shrew; Epilogue Epilogue;

    Biography

    Sarah Werner