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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
This article considers ways in which contemporary feminist theatre-makers respond to Shakespeare by reviewing the performance and production histories of two recent theatre pieces – a new play by Bryony Lavery, and an innovative staging of Hamlet by Jane Prendergast. Drawing on interviews with participants and observation of rehearsals for Ophelia, Jane de Gay looks at the practical issues faced by performers and directors as they explored issues of gender in Shakespeare's plays and characters. She also builds on her own research interest in intertextuality to look at the issues which arise when women writers attempt to ‘rewrite’ Shakespeare, whether by adapting his plays for performance or by writing new texts which allude and respond to them. Jane de Gay is Researcher with the Open University ‘Gender, Politics, and Performance’ Research Project, with whose chair, Lizbeth Goodman, she has edited The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance (1998). She was also a major contributor to Feminist Stages, edited by Goodman, a collection of interviews with women in contemporary British theatre, published by Harwood in 1996.
1. Lavery, Bryony, ‘But Will Men Like It? Or Living as a Feminist Writer Without Committing Murder’, in Women and Theatre: Calling the Shots, ed. Todd, Susan (London; Boston: Faber, 1984), p. 30–1Google Scholar.
2. Bryony Lavery, personal letter, 9 May 1997.
3. Quotations from the play are made with permission of Rosemary Hill, director of the first production and copyright holder until the end of 1997, and of Bryony Lavery, copyright holder from January 1998. A portion of the play will be published in Goodman, Lizbeth, ed., Mythic Women/Real Women (London: Faber, forthcoming, 1998)Google Scholar.
4. Rutter, Carol, with Cusack, Sinead, Dionisotti, Paolo, Shaw, Fiona, Stevenson, Juliet, and Walter, Harriet, Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare's Women Today, ed. Evans, Faith (London: Women's Press, 1988) p. xviiGoogle Scholar.
5. Walter, Harriet, ‘The Heroine, the Harpy, and the Human Being’, in Neiv Theatre Quarterly, IX, No. 34 (1993), p. 110–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6. The miscarriage scene resulted from a workshop in which actors were asked to imagine a Shakespearean character in a private moment. Rosemary Hill performed a scene in which Lady Macbeth was grieving over an object. Bryony Lavery questioned her about this improvisation, and they decided that the object was a child.
7. Carol Rutter et. al., Clamorous Voices, op. cit., p. 56.
8. A second production of Ophelia was presented by students of De Montfort University at the Bowen West Theatre, Bedford, in May 1997.
9. Rosemary Hill, personal interview, November 1996.
10. Novy, Marianne, ed., Cross-Cultural Performances: Differences in Women's Re-visions of Shakespeare (Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), p. 8Google Scholar.
11. Bryony Lavery, ‘Playwright's Note’, production programme.
12. Harriet Walter played Ophelia to Jonathan Pryce's Hamlet at the Royal Court; Frances Barber played Ophelia at Stratford in 1984 and at the Barbican in 1985. See Barber, Frances, ‘Ophelia in Hamlet’, in Players of Shakespeare 2: Further Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company, ed. Jackson, Russell and Smallwood, Robert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 137–49Google Scholar.
13. Bryony Lavery, ‘But Will Men Like It?’, op. cit., p. 28.
14. Gay, Penny, As She Likes It: Shakespeare's Unruly Women (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 2Google Scholar.
15. Bryony Lavery, personal letter, 9 May 1997.
16. Showalter, Elaine, ‘Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism’, in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, ed. Parker, Patricia and Hartman, Geoffrey (New York; London: Methuen, 1985), p. 81Google Scholar.
17. Lavery, Bryony, Origin of the Species, in Plays by Women: Volume Six, ed. Remnant, Mary (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 65–82Google Scholar.
18. From the programme notes.
19. Jane Prendergast, rehearsal notes in the programme. The quotation is from Hamlet, IV, v, 21.
20. Garber, Marjorie, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York; London: Routledge, 1992), p. 38Google Scholar: ‘Recall the voice-over of Olivier's Hamlet: “This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.” To which gender was this dilemma – in 1948, when the film was made – traditionally ascribed?’
21. Jane Prendergast, personal interview, January 1997.