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Slings & Arrows
Adapting Shakespeare in Theatre and Television
Kailin Wright (Author), Don Moore (Author)
9781487507725
Hardback, published 17 February 2026
384 pages, 19 illustrations
23.5 x 16 x 2.8 cm, 0.66 kg
Canadian television comedy Slings & Arrows shows the backstage lives of a Shakespearean theatre company. Finding wild success in Canada and abroad, the series won twenty-two television awards, received rave reviews in the United States, and the Brazilian version, Som e Fúria, earned audiences of eighteen million viewers. This book not only asks but also answers the question, why Shakespeare today?
Offering a diverse collection of essays as well as original interviews with the actors (Rothaford Gray) and creators (Susan Coyne, Bob Martin, and Mark McKinney) of the show, this text is a pivotal resource for any fan, critic, or scholar of Slings & Arrows and Shakespeare adaptation. With the backdrop of debates over Shakespeare’s cultural value today, this book fittingly articulates and fosters its own scholarly debate about the relevance of Slings & Arrows in Shakespeare adaptation studies and Canadian theatre. A common theme linking the different perspectives of the book’s contributors is the idea that the adaptation of colonial figures like Shakespeare continues to be contentious, and, in fact, is symbolic of colonialism deeply embedded in Canadian cultural identity. Slings & Arrows, the book proposes, does not merely explore Shakespeare and Canada, but rather the more provocative relationship of Shakespeare as Canada.
Tying together themes of art, theatre, film, culture, and colonialism, this collection investigates the longstanding relevance of Shakespeare through the lens of adaptation.
Foreword Acknowledgments Act I 1. Reborn in Germany: Theory and the Theatre in Slings & Arrows 2. Slings & Arrows: An Intermediated Shakespearean Adaptation (reprint) 3. Specters of Ethics, Race, and Colonial Inheritance in Slings & Arrows: 4. Performing “a Nobody”: An Interview with Rothaford Gray on His Role as Nahum in Slings & Arrows 5. “Who’s There?”: Slings & Arrows’s Audience Dynamics (reprint) 6. Actors, Names, and the Cultural Inheritance of Slings & Arrows 7. Fistfights and Sacrifice: Troupe Dynamics, Transformation, and Shakespeare Offstage 8. Coloured “Extras” and Spotlit Whites: Spectating “Race” in Slings & Arrows 9. Comic Terror and Masculine Vulnerability in Slings & Arrows: Season Three. (reprint) 10. “Why Shakespeare? Why Canada?”: An Interview with Susan Coyne, Bob Martin, and Mark McKinney on Creating Slings & Arrows 11. Levinas-Based Shakespearean Adaptation, Performance, and Fandom in Slings & Arrows 12. Haters Gonna Hate: Vid Adaptations of Slings & Arrows 13. Exhaustive Shakespeare, Shakespearean Exhaustion: Slings & Arrows and the End of Endless Adaptation Contributors Bibliography Index
Introduction: Slings & Arrows: Adapting Shakespeare as Canada in Theatre and Television
Kailin Wright
“Neither a Borrower nor Lender Be”: The Adaptation and Remediation of Shakespeare
Matt Williamson
Kim Fedderson and J.M. Richardson
The Hyperreal Spectacle of Shakespeare as Canada
Don Moore
Don Moore and Kailin Wright
Act II
“What Players Are They?”: Vulnerable Performativity, Spectatorship, and Ghosts
Kailin Wright
Laura Estill
Elizabeth E. Tavares
George Elliott Clarke
Francesca T. Royster
Act III
“The Play’s the Thing”: Television, Theatre, and the Afterlife of Slings & Arrows
Kailin Wright
Lisa S. Starks
Charlotte Stevens
Daniel Fischlin
Afterword
Mark Fortier