Shakespeare as Popular Entertainer: Elizabethan Stage Practice and the First Folio as Performance Text
Lecture by Professor Rick DesRochers, PhD. Department of Theater, Film, and Dance. LIU Post
Prof. DesRochers has served as the literary manager and dramaturg for the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, and has worked with directors, actors, and designers on many of Shakespeare’s plays both for the Central Park shows at the Delacorte Theater as well as The Public’s downtown theater in Astor Place. His approach will be to contextualize the plays of Shakespeare as popular performance during the Elizabethan period, and how this translates to contemporary productions. He will use a production of Othello featuring Liev Schreiber as Iago and Keith David as Othello, directed by Doug Hughes, in addition to the Old Globe Theater’s production of Richard II featuring Brian Bedford and directed by Joseph Hardy, for which he served as dramaturg and associate producer. How the First Folio was used in a professional setting for rehearsals will be discussed with anecdotal and research materials used for the productions considered. He will look as Shakespeare as a theater practitioner who worked in collaboration with fellow playwrights, actors, and producers in order to examine the Shakespeare’s plays as performance texts. He will also reference the First Folio as a contemporary tool for actors and directors of Shakespeare in performance.
B.A., Arizona State University
M.F.A., University of Massachusetts Amherst
Ph.D., City University of New York Graduate Center
Rick DesRochers is an Associate Professor of Theatre at LIU Post, and an Associate Artist at the PlayPenn New Play Development Conference. He has served as the Literary Director of New Play and Musical Development for the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival and The Goodman Theatre of Chicago, as well as the Artistic Director of the New Theatre in Boston. He is a member of the Society for Stage Directors and Choreographers, and in New York City he has been director and dramaturg for several theater companies including the New York Music Theatre Festival, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Young Playwrights' Inc., Rude Mechanicals, and for regional theaters across the country including The Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis and Chicago Dramatists, as well as internationally for the Soho Theatre of London. He has taught in theatre departments across the country including the New York University Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing Program, New School University, and Emerson College. Professor DesRochers holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in stage direction and dramaturgy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a Masters of Philosophy and a Ph.D. in theatre from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is currently working on a new book for Palgrave Macmillan, The New Humor in the Progressive Era - Americanization and the Vaudeville Comedian.
Theatre History; Dramaturgy; Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama; Directing; Early Cinema History; Performance Studies; Political Theatre Studies; U.S. and Caribbean Theatre Studies
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