Performing Early Modern Drama Beyond Shakespeare
Edward's Boys

The first in-depth study of the all-boy company, Edward's Boys, who are based at King Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Harry R. McCarthy (Author)

9781108810234, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 November 2020

75 pages
17.8 x 12.2 x 0.5 cm, 0.1 kg

'… a useful reminder that there is more to early modern drama than Shakespeare.' Adèle Mignard, Cahiers Elisabethains

This Element provides the first in-depth study of the present-day all-boy company, Edward's Boys, who are based at King Edward VI School ('Shakespeare's School') in Stratford-upon-Avon. Since 2005, the company has produced a wide array of early modern plays, providing the most substantial repertory of early modern drama available for examination by scholars. The Element provides a comprehensive account of the company's practices, drawing on extensive rehearsal and performance observation, evidence from the company's archive, and interviews with actors and key company personnel. The Element takes account of the company's particular educational and strongly interpersonal environment, suggesting that these factors have a distinctive shaping force on their performance practice. In the hands of Edward's Boys, the Element argues, early modern drama becomes the source of company creation, ensemble practice, and virtuosic physical play, inviting us to reimagine what it means – and takes – to perform these plays today.

Introduction
1. From Prosthetics to Practice: Forming a Company
2. 'Making the Script Work': The Actors and the Text
3. The Text on its Feet: Encountering the Past, Embodying the Present
4. 'More of a Sports Team than a Theatre Company': The Ensemble in Performance
Conclusion
Appendix: Edward's Boys Productions, 2005-20.

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literature: history & criticism [DS]