Surrey Shakespeare Centre

Surrey Shakespeare Centre is home to scholarly and creative work that thrives in the intersections between Shakespearean texts and performances, disciplinary innovation, and the multiple ways in which these interact with history, politics and culture.

Using Shakespeare’s unique status as a shared global cultural resource, the Centre fosters conversations and projects that transcend subject boundaries, within the University of Surrey and beyond: for example, with history, philosophy, music and media studies, translation studies, tourism and psychology. In our applied, socially engaged and community performance and pedagogic work, we are particularly interested in the ways in which Shakespeare can contribute to the university research themes of sustainability, urban living and lifelong health and wellbeing.

Further details about Surrey Shakespeare Centre

Members

Robert Shaughnessy (Director)

Theatre history, adaptation, cognitive approaches to performance, actor training, rehearsals studies, performance and disability

Jaq Bessell

Publication and practice in directing and actor training, experience at Shakespeare’s Globe, American Shakespeare Centre and others.

Anne Sophie Refskou

Global and intercultural performance, politics and cultural diplomacy, early modern dramaturgy and emotions, practice as research

Darren Tunstall

Publication and practice in direction and acting, cognition, gesture and movement

Matt Wagner

Dramaturgy and stage praxis, temporality, embodiment and spatiality, phenomenology and performance

Marion Wynne-Davies

Renaissance women writers, Shakespeare and international performance, global Shakespeare, literature and gender

Upcoming Events

Research seminar and workshop: Shakespeare and Laban

Wednesday 4th December 2019, 4-5pm

Frankiss Studio, Guildford School of Acting

Keynote Speakers: Jaq Bessell, GSA's Leader for MA Acting and Laura Weston, Teaching Fellow in Movement

Shakespeare’s understanding of performance spaces – particularly that of the Globe – is written into the fabric of his plays. Rudolf von Laban's movement practice understands space in an analogous way and uses this understanding to enable the physical expressivity of the performer. This project, which will begin its first stage of research and development in January 2020, will use Laban’s practice to explore an exciting physical connection to Shakespeare’s plays in performance. The workshop for the Surrey Shakespeare Centre will therefore represent the starting point for the project as a whole, will outline Laban’s key concepts and practices, and will hopefully lead to a discussion of how these can expand and deepen our understanding of how Shakespeare’s plays use space, time and movement. The workshop will include some practical exercises drawn from Laban’s techniques.

Followed by drinks in the Ivy Arts Centre, 5-6pm

Books

Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropophagy as Global Methodology

Editors: Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho

Shakespeare in the Theatre: The National Theatre, 1963–1975

By Professor Robert Shaughnessy

Shakespeare in Action: 30 Theatre Makers on their Practice

By Dr Jaq Bessell

Surrey%20Shakespeare%20Centre%20Logo%20(GSA)%20(004).jpg