Kingston Shakespeare Seminar
Jan Kott Our Contemporary: Contexts, Legacies, New Perspectives
An international one-day conference, Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames
19 February, 2015

On the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and fifty years to the day after the English publication of Jan Kott’s Shakespeare Our Contemporary, this conference will bring together scholars, students, practitioners, reviewers, and members of the general public, to discuss the role of the Polish critic Jan Kott in Shakespeare and Theatre Studies, as well as his contribution to the intellectual life of the twentieth century. The event is part of a centenary celebration that includes evening performances of Songs of Lear, an acclaimed production by the Polish Song of the Goat Theatre, at the Battersea Arts Centre, London.

Proposals are invited for 20-min seminar papers. Possible topics include:

• Jan Kott as academic critic. How has Shakespeare Our Contemporary shaped the development of Shakespeare criticism and Theatre Studies?
• Kott and the art of the essay. What made Kott’s essays influential; and do we still need them?
• Kott and ancient Greek drama. How has the critic influenced Classical Studies?
• Kott and Existentialism. What was the importance of Kott’s work as a translator of Sartre?
• Kott and the theatre of the absurd: the critic’s response to Beckett, Ionesco and Gombrowicz.
• Kott and global theatre. What was the importance of the critic’s interest in Kabuki and Noh?
• Kott’s and the anthropology of theatre. What was the extent of Kott’s interaction with Jerzy Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor, and Peter Brook?
• Kott and Modernism. Can the critic be read as a Modernist writer?
• Kott and religion. What were the critic’s views on Catholic doctrine on morality and sexuality, particularly in light of his writings on androgyny in Renaissance art and literature?
• Kott’s politics. What were the critic’s reactions to Marxist and Post-Marxist political theory, and to their impact on Polish and international theatre and theatre theory?
• Kott and Jewish ethnicity. What is the impact of the Shoah on Polish and world theatre?
• Kott, Polish emigration, and émigré culture. How do exiled artists and intellectuals like the critic shape the societies in which they work?

If you are interested in participating in ‘Jan Kott Our Contemporary’, please send a 200-word abstract with a 50-word cv. by December 1 2014 to Aneta Mancewicz and Richard Wilson: kott.london2015@gmail.com.

Alternatively you may use this postal address:

Aneta Mancewicz and Richard Wilson
Kingston University
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Penrhyn Road
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey KT1 2EE

Speakers will be notified of acceptance by 8 December 2014.

There is no registration fee for ‘Jan Kott Our Contemporary’. The conference will be free and open to the general public. Tickets for the Song of the Goat Theatre production of Songs of Lear at the Battersea Arts Centre on 20 and 21 February, 2015 will be on sale at a special rate.

Organisers: John Elsom (Kingston Shakespeare Seminar), Anna Godlewska (Polish Cultural Institute), Anna Gruszka (Polish Cultural Institute), Aneta Mancewicz (Kingston University), Aleksandra Sakowska (British Friends of the Gdansk Theatre Trust), Richard Wilson (Kingston University);

John Fletcher: A Critical Reappraisal
Christ Church University, Canterbury
26-27 June, 2015

Conference Website

Keynote Speakers:

• Professor Gordon McMullan (King’s College London)
• Dr Lucy Munro (King’s College London)
• Professor Sandra Clark (Professor Emerita, Institute of English Studies, University of London)
• Professor Clare McManus (University of Roehampton)

It is fair to say that John Fletcher remains an understudied and under-appreciated writer in recent early modern scholarship. Even the very recent success of non-Shakespearean drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and the Swan Theatre’s commitment to staging Shakespeare’s contemporaries, has proved fruitless so far in introducing Fletcher to a new generation of academics and theatre-goers. In the near 390 years since his death, it is now time for a complete re-evaluation of the work of a man who made a considerable impact on Jacobean theatre and society by producing a vast corpus of about 53 plays that challenged, commented on, and critiqued Renaissance England. By investigating Fletcher’s ideas and ideals, apparent in his work, we can gain a significant understanding of Jacobean theatre practices and politics: his career virtually encompassed the entirety of the reign of James I, under whose patronage he worked as Shakespeare’s successor as the resident dramatist of the King’s Men. In short, to study Fletcher is to study the soul of the age.

The conference seeks to bring together leading experts, early career researchers, and postgraduate students working on John Fletcher to reassess his engagement with the ideas, culture, politics, and society of Renaissance England.

This call for papers asks for contributions considering:

• Any aspect of Fletcher’s involvement with the theatre of Jacobean England;
• His use of European literary sources, particularly those of Spanish origin;
• The textual and performance history of his plays;
• His status as a collaborative writer and his working relationship with his more frequent writing partners (Beaumont, Field, Massinger);
• His influences and ideas on politics, gender, and culture;
• The Fletcher ‘canon’ of plays;
• Fletcher’s collaborative plays with Shakespeare;
• Fletcher’s influence on Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s influence on Fletcher;
• The trials and tribulations of editing or staging them in our modern world;
• New approaches to analysing his work as a dramatist.

This is by no means an exhaustive or constrictive list, and we invite contributions for papers that critically re-evaluate and extend our knowledge of a writer whose plays helped shape and redefine the place and importance of the theatre in Renaissance London.

After the sessions in Canterbury, the conference will reconvene for a one day event at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, where the Shakespeare Institute Players will perform an unabridged script-in-hand production of one of Fletcher’s plays. The performance will take place on Saturday 25th July 2015. A conference website will be set up in the next few weeks where delegates and members of the public will be able to vote, from a list of 5 Fletcher plays, for which one they would like to see staged. The play with the most votes will be performed by the Players! We invite people to use the Twitter hashtag #TeamJohnFletcher or to get in touch with us at the email address below to cast a vote. One vote per Twitter account or email address, please!

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words for papers lasting 20 minutes in length to Dr Steve Orman (Canterbury Christ Church University) and José A. Pérez Díez (Shakespeare Institute), conference conveners, at the following email address: johnfletcherconference@gmail.com

The deadline for sending proposals is Friday 9th January 2015.