Abstract: In this interview with Bailey Sincox, screenwriter Ilana Wolpert describes how she adapted Much Ado About Nothing into the 2023 film Anyone But You . Wolpert discusses how Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedick anchored a script in which "Bea" and "Ben" feel pressured to find love. While Wolpert's Hero and Claudio characters followed a tragicomic arc in early drafts (with the Don John character a troublesome ex-boyfriend attempting to reclaim "Halle" at her wedding), the final version dropped this subplot. At the same time, Wolpert explains, Shakespeare influenced her queering of the romantic comedy film genre (Halle marries Claudia). Wolpert reveals how fragments of Shakespearean text serve as "chapter markers" in the film, as well as how some of scholars' favorite topics with respect to Much Ado ––compulsory marriage culture, overhearing or "noting" scenes, humoral theory, and masculine fashion––feature in her adaptation.
Abstract: Productions directed by Perry Mills for Edward’s Boys company, of Stratford-upon-Avon’s King Edward VI School, have attracted interest from academics and theater practitioners alike for the insights they offer into an early modern repertoire that was written mostly with child performers in mind. Tours to the South of France have drawn attention to peer-to-peer interaction between young performers and audiences. This article looks at the Edward’s Boys experience from the perspective of the players themselves. The focus is on the 2022 post-COVID production, “Trust me, I’m a Doctor!” , a “gallimaufry” of medical scenes from English, French, and Latin drama, which changed and developed throughout the cycle of performances. Tracing how the company adjusted, this article suggests that this served to foster an even greater sense of ensemble, the associated strengths of which are, the authors contend, central to the educational ethos of exploring Shakespeare and early modern drama through performance.
Abstract: A Two Woman Hamlet was originally conceived by Mara Sherman, with actors Nicola Collett and Hannah Sweet, for the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, DC in 2018. Sherman made the script, an archival video of a 2021 Edinburgh Fringe performance, and extensive notes on the rehearsal and development process available through New Play Exchange in 2024. Nora J. Williams directed a fresh production in 2025, produced by the Lakeside Theatre’s Homegrown initiative in Colchester (UK), which supports creative work by staff, students, and alumni of the University of Essex. After a year of working together on the show, Williams sat down with movement director Marina Cusí and actors Deanna Strasse and Sharmila Peake to discuss the process of rehearsing a two-person show with twenty-four characters, the weight of Hamlet in the popular imagination, and what makes a production feminist.
Abstract: In 2023–24, the authors led a year-long study of Thomas Kyd’s influential Elizabethan revenge drama, The Spanish Tragedy , at Villanova University. The project included an interdisciplinary grad-undergrad course, guest artists, a scholarly symposium, and a full-scale production with accompanying website. In this article, the authors reflect on the logistics of planning and executing this project within a university framework, situating the work of students, faculty, artists, and other partners within the larger community of the university. In doing so, this article reflects on the project’s achievements and the core underpinning principles and support that projects of this scale might emulate.
Abstract: The Untitled Othello Project is a series of residencies, involving a relatively consistent acting ensemble rigorously unpacking Shakespeare’s script to see if there may actually be a play in there worth doing. It is an open-ended and excruciatingly patient rehearsal process that aims to respect the basic humanity of its players and its characters, instead of rushing towards new staging ideas to put into productions that merely reinscribe old racist tropes. Untitling proposes that we have to examine the contents of our own hearts before we can imagine the workings of the characters’ hearts. The author joined for a week to play Iago, and this article offers embodied reflection from within that distinctive rehearsal process. It considers both how Untitling pushes against how we usually make theater, and how a white actor might usefully contribute to a manifestly anti-racist process while charged to analyze and inhabit the most racist character in the play.
Abstract: This essay draws upon the fields of sports psychology, cognitive science, somatic research, and Practice-as-Research (PaR) to interrogate how the use of imagery—specifically visualizations of the Globe stage—can enhance and support actor training for Shakespeare. I explore how the use of Augmented Reality (AR) technology helps actors to embody Shakespeare via virtual rehearsals that storyboard an actor’s gaze, and I illuminate how an understanding of this form of performance documentation cultivates a highly personalized connection to Shakespeare’s texts, improved confidence, and clarity in performance. By expanding the landscape of actor training to incorporate the AR Globe 360 app, actors in training can create a performance score that serves as both an artifact of and a blueprint for performance.
