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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.1873  Thursday, 26 July 2001

From:           Michael Edgar <Michael.Edgar@utas.edu.au>
Date:           Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:03:16 +1000
Subject:        Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association (ANZSA)
Conference

Shakespeare: Looking Before and After: A Performance Appraisal

The Seventh Biennial Conference of the Australian and New Zealand
Shakespeare Association

February 7 - 11, 2002

At the Academy of Arts, University of Tasmania, Launceston, Tasmania,
Australia

http://www.perform.utas.edu.au/anzsa/index.html

This conference aims to look at the position of Shakespeare studies and
Shakespeare performance at the beginning of the twentieth-century. It is
hoped that a number of the contributions will offer with a retrospective
look at how Shakespeare has been viewed in different societies and eras.
How has Shakespeare been appraised, who have been the appraisers and
what have been their values?
Equally, it is hoped that other papers will use the perspective of the
beginning of the twenty-first century to consider the future of
Shakespeare.

Four hundred years after Hamlet seems a good time to appraise the
performance, past and projected, of the Shakespeare industry in its
theatrical, scholastic, educational and its other continually
diversifying branches.

By most indicators Shakespeare Inc. has been a success of Coca-Cola
proportions. The original Globe product has been truly globalised,
franchised into all major languages, and is available all over the
world.

The secondary industry of Shakespearean scholarship continues its
staggering annual output of writings and provides employment to
thousands.

Educationally, numerous websites market the delights of Shakespeare to
the younger generations.
Performance of the actual scripts proceeds apace in their original form,
or on film and TV or in other contemporary media.

The closing years of the twentieth-century saw Shakespeare voted Man of
the Millennium, involved in an Oscar win and credited with the
'invention of the human.'

How did it all happen and can the boom continue? Has the value of
Shakespeare been inflated beyond reason?

Can the commodification of Shakespeare continue apace? Is the industry
self-perpetuating or is it heading for a crash? Could Shakespeare Inc.
suddenly find itself in an Encyclopedia Britannica position?

Are we still in the era of Modern English, which Shakespeare helped to
shape or are we entering a new phase of the language in which a visually
oriented and cyberspeaking generations will simply find renaissance
texts too hard.

Academically, could Shakespeare become Chaucerfied, a niche subject
fascinating a dwindling élite of scholars?

Will Shakespeare continue to be a litmus paper for every new 'ism'?

Can the canon remain as a viable set of accessible playscripts or in a
refined form of asset-stripping, become a resource to be continually
mined for titles, plots, characters and calendar quotes?

There will be a strong emphasis on the analysis of actual performance of
the plays, historically and contemporaneously.

We aim at a 'large discourse'.

Shakespeare: How's he done? How's he doing? How's he going to do? How's
he been done? How's he being done? How's he going to be done? How did he
get where he is? Where's he going from here? Shakespeare's future - are
you bullish or bearish?

Papers are called for dealing with these issues. Papers should be twenty
minutes in length (or twenty-five minutes if they are accompanied by
video or slide presentation).

Please send proposals giving the title of the paper, a 200-3000 word
abstract and details of the author(s) to:

Michael Edgar
Convenor
ANZSA Conference
School of Visual and Performing Arts
University of Tasmania
Locked Bag 1 - 306
Launceston
Tasmania Australia 7250
Phone: 03 6324 3599
Fax:    03 6324 3987
Email:  Michael.Edgar@utas.edu.au or peter. Hammond@utas.edu.au

Deadline for papers: 6 August 2001

_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@ws.bowiestate.edu
The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu>

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