Directorless Shakespeare

Challenging received scholarship on the practice of Shakespeare's theatre, this book displaces a contemporary cultural bias towards leadership models to reconsider possibilities of working in a non-hierarchical and inclusive creative theatrical practice.

Elena M. Pellone is a graduate of Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (Shakespeare). She has a BA from the University of Melbourne and an MA and PhD from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. She is Artistic Facilitator of the V.enice S.hakespeare C.ompany and An-rk- Shakespeare with whom she creates Directorless Shakespeare productions in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.

Prologue. Opening the curtain - Expressing hidden backgrounds, changing the narrative, destabilising hierarchies, empowering the collective Chapter 1 The Globe: Redistributing power, smashing the mirror up to nature Chapter 2 "We do it with the lights on": Actors' Renaissance Season at the Blackfriars Playhouse Chapter 3 An-rk- Shakespeare's Richard II: Devolved authority and decolonising theatrical practice Chapter 4 Much Ado About Italy: Embracing alterity, Much Ado About Nothing/Molto Rumore Per Nulla, staging Shakespeare's comedy in Venice, Italy Chapter 5 An-rk- Shakespeare's Macbeth: a spectral tragedy, by the graves of Shakespeare and Burbage Chapter 6 The Rape of Lucrece: "So much grief and not a tongue" - Lucrece's embodied voice in performance Epilogue. Tearing the curtain down