Shakespeare and the Queen's Men (SQM) is a research and teaching project that uses performance to explore the the dramaturgy and staging practices of Elizabeth I's company of actors, the Queen's Men (1583-1603). In 2006, we produced a festival of three Queen's Men's plays in repertory and toured them to venues in Toronto and Hamilton. Since then, we have produced or commissioned productions of the entire repertoire of nine plays identified by McMillin and Maclean as the Queen's Men's 'canon'. Video and other records of production, along with teaching tools, are available on Peter Cockett's Performing the Queen's Men site and as textual annotations in Queen's Men Editions. My focus is The True Tragedie of Richard the Third (published in 1594), which I directed in 2007. It is one of the sources for Shakespeare's Richard the Third, and I am especially curious about how the play's performance dramaturgy (rather than its narrative) might have influenced Shakespeare.
Presentations and Publications
Articles in Progress
I currently have one article in submission.
Performances
Director. The True Tragedy of Richard the Third. Centre for Performance Studies in Early Theatre/Graduate Centre for Study of Drama. November 2007.
Reviews
Single author. “The Queen’s Men: The Research-Performance Experiments.” Research Opportunities in Medieval and Renaissance Drama 46 (2007).
Conference Presentations
Single author. "'What Makes Thou Upon a Stage?': 'Truthful' Space in the Queen's Men's True Tragedy of Richard the Third." Panel paper: Theatre and the Reformation of Space in Early Modern Europe 4: Virtual and Actual Spaces. Making Publics/Renaissance Society of America. Montreal, March, 2011.
Single author. “'There's not a boy left alive: dead boys and the politics of actor doubling in Shakespeare's Henry V and the Queen's Men's True Tragedy of Richard the Third.” Working group paper: Shakespearean Performance. American Society of Theatre Research, November 2009.
Co-athor. “Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men.” Panel presentation: Congress presentations on research-performance. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Toronto, May 2006.
Seminars and Workshops
Seminar Co-leader. “The Queen’s Men’s Theatrical Influence: Repertory, Dramaturgy, Performance”. Shakespeare Association of America, Washington, 2009.
Workshop Leader. “The Queen’s Men’s Theatrical Influence: Repertory, Dramaturgy, Performance”. Workshop. Shakespeare Association of America, Washington, 2009.
Panelist. Round Table Discussion. Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men. Toronto. October 2006.
Workshop Leader. “Playing with Shakespeare and his Source: Richard the Third”. Public workshop. Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto, June 2007.
Workshop Leader. “Playing with Shakespeare and his Source: King Leir”. Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto, June 2007.