- Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Photo: Andy Bradshaw
August 12, 2008
Globe Education at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London will host a major conference this October to mark the 400th anniversary of the re-acquisition of the Blackfriars Playhouse by Shakespeare’s theatre company, The King’s men. The event is being organized in partnership with the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. The center is home to a full-scale, working replica of the Blackfriars Theatre. The second half of the conference will be held in Staunton in autumn of 2009.
In 1596 James Burbage converted part of an old monastery in Blackfriars into an indoor theatre. This was a small, candlelit space meant to entertain the wealthiest citizens and aristocracy. Shakespeare’s company moved into this theatre in 1609 and may have performed exclusively there in the winter and at the Globe in the summer
The conference, titled Outside In / Inside Out: Shakespeare, the Globe and the Blackfriars, will bring together Shakespearean scholars and theatre practitioners to consider plays that were written for outdoors theatres that transferred to indoor theatres and vice versa.
The conference is being held in honor of Professor Andrew Gurr, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Reading and former Director of Research at Shakespeare’s Globe. Gurr is a leading theatre historian of the Shakespeare period and was instrumental in the research behind the building of the new Globe. Earlier this year, he was recognized by the Globe Theatre with the Sam Wanamaker Award. Gurr will give the Theo Crosby Fellowship Lecture to open the conference on 23 October.
The conference is part of an annual series hosted by Globe Education. The conferences are designed to bring theatre scholars and practitioners together to share their differing perspectives on plays and playhouses of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
Director of Globe Education, Patrick Spottiswoode, said, “It is fitting that this year’s conference should focus on the Blackfriars Playhouse and is being held to celebrate the work of Andrew Gurr. The 400th anniversary of the Blackfriars provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the impact of moving to an indoor theatre for winter performances at a time when the Shakespeare’s Globe is planning to build an indoor Jacobean Playhouse alongside the Globe. It also provides us with an opportunity to celebrate the work of one of the most influential theatre scholars who has also been one of the most significant advisers to the Globe for over 30 years.”
The conference program will include sessions with John Astington, Ralph Cohen, Claire van Kampen, Frank Hildy, Ros Knutson, Michael Hattaway, Lucy Munro and Mark Rylance, the former Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre.
The first production of this year’s Read Not Dead staged readings will also be performed at the end of the conference weekend. All four plays selected for this season were written for indoor playhouses.
Outside In / Inside Out: Shakespeare, the Globe and the Blackfriars Globe Education Conference will take place 24-26 October 2008.
Conference tickets cost £100 and are available by calling the Box Office on +44 (0)20 7401 9919 .
