Description: New Places: Shakespeare and Civic Creativity documents and analyses the different ways in which a range of innovative projects take Shakespeare out into the world beyond education and the theatre. Mixing critical reflection on the social value of Shakespeare with new creative work in different forms and idioms, the volume triumphantly shows that Shakespeare can make a real contribution to contemporary civic life. Highlights include: Garrick's 1769 Shakespeare ode, its revival in 2016, and a devised performance interpretation of it; the full text of Carol Ann Duffy's A Shakespeare Masque (set to music by Sally Beamish); a new Shakespearean libretto inspired by Wagner; an exploration of the civic potential of new Shakespeare opera and ballet; a fresh Shakespeare-inspired poetic liturgy, including commissions by major British poets; a production of The Merchant of Venice marking the 500th anniversary of the Venetian Jewish Ghetto; and a remaking of Pericles as a response to the global migrant crisis.
Brief description: Paul Edmondson is Head of Research and Knowledge for The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and a priest in The Church of England.
Review Quotes:
"Demonstrating how Shakespeare remains relevant in the 21st century, this book is valuable for situating Shakespeare in non-traditional settings. Summing Up: Highly recommended." --CHOICE
"At the crest of a coming wave of creative engagements with Shakespeare, New Places re-sets the prepositions that situate us to his plays. Less interested in finding the meanings "in" or "around" Shakespeare, New Places makes meaning "through" and "with" his works, engaging communities outside the academy and rehearsing new perceptual possibilities for the place of art in the twenty-first century." --Paul Menzer, Professor of Shakespeare and Performance, Mary Baldwin University, USA. "Taking its cue from the happy accident of Shakespeare's historic address in Stratford-upon-Avon -a house called 'New Place' - this exuberant collection of essays finds Shakespeare more recently resident in dozens of other 'new places'. 'Civic Shakespeare' is found amongst singers, dancers, masquers, refugees, schoolchildren, in a convent-turned-Sufi Centre, in the Venetian Ghetto and amongst townspeople." --Carol Chillington Rutter, NTF, Professor of Shakespeare and Performance Studies, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK.