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List of contents
Introduction
Part One
Chapter One Performing Pastoral: A New Form of Poetic Representation
Chapter Two Light them at the Fiery Glow-Worm’s Eyes: Max Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
Part Two
Chapter Three Shakespeare-InspiredNature-Theaters: MinackandtheWillowGlobe
Chapter Four Wandering in Woods: The Natural Place for the Play
Part Three
Chapter Five Green Atmospheres: Nature Playing (Along, Sometimes)
Chapter Six Shakespeare for a Changing Climate
Afterword
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Evelyn O'Malley is Lecturer in Drama at the University of Exeter, UK.
Summary
Winner of the ASLE-UKI 2022 Book Prize
From The Pastoral Players’ 1884 performance of As You Like It to contemporary site-specific productions activist interventions, there is a rich history of open air performances of Shakespeare’s plays beyond their early modern origins. Weathering Shakespeare reveals how new insights from the environmental humanities can transform our understanding of this popular performance practice. Drawing on audience accounts of outdoor productions of those plays most commonly chosen for open air performance – including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest – the book examines how performers and audiences alike have reacted to unpredictable natural environments.
Foreword
A groundbreaking ecological study of Shakespeare in outdoor performance.
Additional text
There are important familiar points to be made about the value of this book: its original focus on contemporary outdoor Shakespeare is a significant contribution to our understanding of theatre today. More important though, is its careful, slow, local and holistic attention to performance. By examining the creative worlding or collective weathering that goes on between players, audience, text and location, O’Malley’s study is exemplary of what theatre scholarship should do in the age of ecological crisis.
