Tag Archives: Shakespeare Institute

Brudermord: Puppet Hamlet

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Three chances to see the 18th century style puppet show of Der Bestrafte Brudermord, with an academic talk by Professor Tiffany Stern.

In 1710, a mysterious slapstick German Hamlet was found in the archives of a German monastery. The Hidden Room Theatre has worked with Oxford University’s Tiffany Stern to re-create this historic eccentric event as it may have originally been performed: a puppet show. The marionette show, suitable for scholars and children alike, employs on-stage narrators who perform all the voices, the music and all sound effects for the show. The 18th century German version includes additional comic characters and scenes but the show will be performed in English. Acting as a laboratory for Professor Stern’s research, the Hidden Room uses a new English translation by Christine Schmidle with puppets created by Mystery Bird Puppet Show and styled and costumed by Jennifer Davis to imagine the staging conditions of an early 18th century puppet play.                                                                                                                                                                         31st May, Shakespeare’s Globe, 4pm and 7pm (7pm performance introduced by Tiffany Stern)

2nd June, Magdalen College, Oxford 2-6pm (one hour talk and puppet show by Stephen Mottram; one hour talk by Tiffany Stern; Brudermord by Hidden Room): contact Laurie Maguire (laurie.maguire@ell.ox.ac.uk) or Tiffany Stern (tiffany.stern@ell.ox.ac.uk) for a free ticket.

3rd June Shakespeare Institute, Stratford Upon Avon, 3pm (one hour talk by Tiffany Stern), 5.30pm Brudermord.

John Fletcher: A Critical Reappraisal, 26-27th June 2015

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Registration is open for this two-day conference, to be held at Canterbury Christ Church University

The programme is available here

Keynote Speakers: Professor Gordon McMullan (King’s College London); Dr Lucy Munro (King’s College London); Professor Sandra Clark (Professor Emerita, Institute of English Studies, University of London); Professor Clare McManus (University of Roehampton)

Summary

It is fair to say that John Fletcher remains an understudied and underappreciated writer in recent early modern scholarship. Even the very recent success of non-Shakespearean drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and the Swan Theatre’s commitment to staging Shakespeare’s contemporaries, has proved fruitless so far in introducing Fletcher to a new generation of academics and theatre-goers. In the near 390 years since his death, it is now time for a complete re-evaluation of the work of a man who made a considerable impact on Jacobean theatre and society by producing a vast corpus of about 53 plays that challenged, commented on, and critiqued Renaissance England. By investigating Fletcher’s ideas and ideals, apparent in his work, we can gain a significant understanding of Jacobean theatre practices and politics: his career virtually encompassed the entirety of the reign of James I, under whose patronage he worked as Shakespeare’s successor as the resident dramatist of the King’s Men. In short, to study Fletcher is to study the soul of the age.

After the sessions in Canterbury, the conference will reconvene for a one day event at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, where the Shakespeare Institute Players will perform an unabridged script-in-hand production of one of Fletcher’s plays.