Blokes reclaiming the Bard: public seminar

May 24, 2007

The prominent Canadian actor, director and theatre scholar Ian Maclennan will present a public seminar at the University of New England on Monday 28 May, when he will talk about modern experiments with single-sex productions of Shakespeare's plays.

Dr Maclennan's discussion will include recent productions at the Globe Theatre in London (where the former artistic director Mark Rylance played the leading female roles in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Twelfth Night), and productions by the innovative companies "Propeller" (pictured here) and "Cheek by Jowl".

His talk, at 12.30 pm in UNE's Arts Building (Room LG1), will relate this modern phenomenon to its historical roots on the early English stage: Shakespeare wrote all his great female roles – Cleopatra, Juliet, Beatrice, and the rest – to be performed by boy actors. (Women were not a common sight on English stages until the Restoration in 1660.) He will illustrate the talk, titled "Single-sexing Shakespeare: historical and production issues in contemporary performance", with examples from some of the modern productions he is discussing.

Dr Maclennan is the Director of the Theatre Arts Program at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, and teaches theatre history and theory. He has acted and directed in countries including Canada, the United States and the UK. His adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew for an all-male cast was presented by the "CentrStage" company in Launceston, Tasmania, last year.

For more information on the seminar, contact Helena Davies on (02) 6773 2534 (e-mail: hdavies@une.edu.au).

Posted by Jim Scanlan at May 24, 2007 03:15 PM