City Stage Globe

This interdisciplinary study theorizes the interaction of individual performance and social space. Examining three categories of space – the urban, the theatrical, and the cartographic – this volume considers the role of performance in the production and operation of these spaces during a period in London’s history defined roughly by the life of Shakespeare. City/Stage/Globe not only organizes a selection of plays, pageants, maps, and masques in the historical and cultural contexts in which they emerged, but also uses performance theory to locate the ways in which these seemingly ephemeral events contributed to lasting change in the spatial concepts and physical topograpy of early modern London.

In every major city, there exists a complex exchange between urban space and the institution of the theatre. City Stages is an interdisciplinary and materialist analysis of this relationship as it has existed in Toronto since 1967. Locating theatre companies – their sites and practices – in Toronto’s urban environment, Michael McKinnie focuses on the ways in which the theatre has adapted to changes in civic ideology, environment, and economy. Over the past four decades, theatre in Toronto has been increasingly implicated in the civic self-fashioning of the city and preoccupied with the consequences of the changing urban political economy. City Stages investigates a number of key questions that relate to this pattern. How has theatre been used to justify certain forms of urban development in Toronto? How have local real estate markets influenced the ways in which theatre companies acquire and use performance space? How does the analysis of theatre as an urban phenomenon complicate Canadian theatre historiography? McKinnie uses the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts and the Toronto Centre for the Performing Arts as case studies and considers theatrical companies such as Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto Workshop Productions, Buddies in Bad Times, and Necessary Angel in his analysis. City Stages combines primary archival research with the scholarly literature emerging from both the humanities and social sciences. The result is a comprehensive and empirical examination of the relationship between the theatrical arts and the urban spaces that house them.

A New York Times Notable Book: “A loving testament to the enduring ability of Shakespeare’s play to connect in myriad ways across countries and cultures” (Pop Matters). For the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, the Globe Theatre undertook an unparalleled journey: to take Hamlet to every country on the planet, to share this beloved play with the entire world. The tour was the brainchild of Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of the Globe, and in Hamlet: Globe to Globe, Dromgoole takes readers along with him. From performing in sweltering deserts, ice-cold cathedrals, and heaving marketplaces, and despite food poisoning in Mexico, the threat of ambush in Somaliland, an Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and political upheaval in Ukraine, the Globe’s players pushed on. Dromgoole shows us the world through the prism of Shakespeare—what the Danish prince means to the people of Sudan, the effect of Ophelia on the citizens of Costa Rica, and how a sixteenth-century play can touch the lives of Syrian refugees. And thanks to this incredible undertaking, Dromgoole uses the world to glean new insight into this masterpiece, exploring the play’s history, its meaning, and its pleasures. “The Shakespearean equivalent of Bourdain’s TV series, Parts Unknown. . . . [Dromgoole’s] aesthetic principle, or unprincipled aesthetic, makes him a natural tour guide for global Shakespeare . . . A comic epic.” —The Washington Post

Step on to a stage full of stories with this beautiful anthology of 12 stories from Shakespeare. Featuring much-loved classics such as The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Othello, each story is rewritten in a comprehensive way that is accessible for children and stunningly illustrated by collage artist Alice Lindstrom. This lavish follow-up to A Year Full of Stories and A World Full of Animal Stories is the perfect gift for book lovers young and old.

Shakespeare and London: A Dictionary is a topographical reference book of all the London locations, allusions and colloquial terms mentioned in Shakespeare's complete works. For many years critics have argued that Shakespeare did not engage with the city in which he lived, however London's topography and life is present in all his work, in its language, its locations and its characters. This dictionary offers a concise and fascinating insight into the city's impact on the Shakespearean imagination and provides readers with a wide-ranging guide to early modern London, its contemporary meanings and the ways in which Shakespeare employs these throughout the canon.

Brenton's dramatization of one of the world's most famous true-love stories