Laura Kressly (she/her) is a theatre critic, dramaturg, and director. She is co-founder of the Network of Independent Critics. She is currently working on her PhD at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she is also a visiting lecturer.
Aida Patient (she/her) teaches women´s writing in the Department of English, Languages, and Cultures at Mount Royal University in Canada.
Kimberly A. Williams (she/her) is a teacher, scholar, and activist. She directs the Women´s and Gender Studies Program at Mount Royal University in Canada.
This collection of short, accessible essays serves as a supplementary text to Morgan Lloyd Malcolm´s play, Emilia.
Critically acclaimed and beloved by audiences, this innovative and ground-breaking show is a speculative history, an imaginative (re)telling of the life of English Renaissance poet Aemilia Bassano Lanyer. This book features essays by theatre practitioners, activists, and scholars and informed by intersectional feminist, critical race, queer, and postcolonial analyses will enable students and their teachers across secondary school and higher education to consider the play´s major themes from a wide variety of theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives. This volume explores the current events and cultural contexts that informed the writing and performing of Emilia between 2017 and 2019, various aspects of the professional London productions, critical and audience responses, and best practices for teaching the play to university and secondary school students. It includes a foreword by Emilia playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre, arts activism, feminist literature, and theory.
List of Figures
List of Boxes
List of Contributors
Foreword
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
Introduction
Laura Kressly, Aida Patient, and Kimberly A. Williams
Section I: Current Events and Cultural Contexts
Chapter 1 Women `think "round it"´! Writing and Publication in Emilia
Jennifer Young
Chapter 2 `Burn the Whole F*cking House Down!´: Black Feminist Lessons for Joyful Rage
Kimberly A. Williams
Chapter 3 Frenzy´s Weaponry: The Mythic Dimension of Emilia
David Bullen
Chapter 4 "This is My Gaff": Safe Spaces, Cultural Property, and Shakespeare
Peter Kirwan
Chapter 5 Towards Emilia: Black and South Asian Women in the Performance of Shakespeare
Sita Thomas
Section II: Emilia in Practice
Chapter 6 `There´s a Woman on the Stage!´: Emilia and the Politics of Bodies in Space in Shakespeare's Globe
Sara Reimers
Chapter 7 Embodying Emilia: A Conversation About Movement Creation
Christina Fulcher and Anna Morrissey, with Laura Kressly
Chapter 8 History, Her Story, or Our Story? Navigating the Tensions of Historically-Responsive Storytelling in Emilia
Eleanor Chadwick
Chapter 9 `For Eve. For Every Eve.´ An Intersectional Feminist Investigation of Men´s Violence Against Women in Emilia
Erica Navickas
Chapter 10 We are Emilia: Emilia as Witness, Witnessing Emilia
Catherine Quirk
Chapter 11 #IAmEmilia: When Marketing Creates a Movement
Gemma Kate Allred
Section III: Critics and Audiences Respond
Chapter 12 `There´s Only So Much Work Our Imaginations Can Do´: Emilia and London´s Privileged Theatre Critics
Laura Kressly
Chapter 13 #EmiliaFamilia: Representation Matters
Heather Marshall
Chapter 14 The #EmiliaFamilia: Feminist Fandom on Twitter
Emma Bentley
Chapter 15 Feeling Collectives: Emotions, Feminist Solidarity, and Difference in Emilia
Isabel Stuart
Section IV: Teaching Emilia
Chapter 16 Teaching Morgan Lloyd Malcolm´s Emilia in a University Classroom
Aida Patient
Chapter 17 On Teaching Emilia as Intersectional Feminist Praxis
Kimberly A. Williams
Chapter 18 `What´s past is prologue´: Teaching Women, Race, and Emilia in the Twenty-first Century
Rebecca Steinberger
Chapter 19 Opening Up New Worlds: Emilia at a London Girls´ School
Kathryn Martin
Appendix A: A Brief Chronology of the Life and Times of Aemilia Bassano Lanyer
Aida Patient
Appendix B: Biographies of Historical Figures in Emilia
Janet Bartholomew
Appendix C: Nationality, Racial and Education Demographics of Emilia Critics
Laura Kressly
Appendix D: Semester Research Project for an Introductory Women´s and Gender Studies Course
Kimberly A. Williams
This collection of short, accessible essays serves as a supplementary text to Morgan Lloyd Malcolm´s play, `Emilia´.
Klappentext
This collection of short, accessible essays serves as a supplementary text to Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's play, 'Emilia'.
