I have a history as a theatre director and subsequently as a fiction writer.  I had been writing a novel in which an actor was cast as Angelo in Measure for Measure when news of the Humanities Engage grant came through. So Measure for Measure was already on my mind.  And had been for a long time, a really long time.  I even published an essay when the play surfaced in my mind during the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings. And thought about it again during the Kavanaugh hearings.  Isabella cries out “Did I tell this who would believe it?” after she’s been propositioned by Angelo.

Way back when I was getting my PhD, I planned to write a stage history of Measure for Measure as my dissertation.  I delayed because I was more interested in production work and finally changed my topic to one that was close to my heart—Rhythm as an artistic concept.  But I seem to be a person who likes to go back to pick up dropped stitches because the Measure for Measure project never quite left me.  When the announcement of the Humanities Engage Faculty Summer Stipends for Curricular Innovation came to me, I found that it suited what had been gnawing at me.  I still wanted to do the project on MM and I saw the chance to do it my way—as funny, accessible, and connected with an audience.

Thus I began planning a seminar that was a collaborative group project of telling the story of MM through the ages.  Of Shakespeare’s plays, it is one of the least known by the general theatre-going public.  Often called a problem play, it got chopped up in a variety of ways when producers attempted to hide or solve the problems.  This alone is a good story and one I wanted to tell.  At first I thought of the seminar as a place in which we would engage in writing the history. Eight people, maybe.  Eight chapters.   People choosing what time period most appealed to them. 

But Humanities Engage has prompted me to expand my goals.  We may still end up with a book—a series of essays as chapters. But our products will also be presentations.  I hope to get the students to join in and shape the whole—as if we are doing a theatre production.  Do they like the idea of moving chronologically?  Or do they have another set of attractions (for instance, working by character)?  And since I will have theatre people in the seminar, we will find ways to exhibit our findings along the way.  I’ve made a few contacts about podcasts. The center for Creativity and the Broadcast studio are both possibilities. But in the most basic of ways, we can present to live audiences along the way—for instance, giving a reading of a part of Shakespeare’s play and then a reading of an adaptation of that play and analyzing the differences. 

There is always the struggle in theatre these days to not be too “texty.”  The BBC often failed in the 1980s with actors reciting and performing from the chin up.  Plays on stage are acted.   And bodies in motion are a part of it. 

As a director, I was responsible for all that physicality, of setting bodies in motion.  But as a fiction writer, I am more “texty” generating thought reaching out to thought.  A reader can swallow a novel without moving an inch.  So the director part of me is going to be needed because this is about showing as well as telling what we believe happened on the stage.

I spent the summer months reading materials about MM and taking notes.   I consulted with librarian Bill Daw several times.  He’s been wonderful about gathering things like Stratford Ontario memorabilia and press materials as well as guiding me through the systems that make ebooks available.  I consulted with Sara Thiel who once taught for us and whose career includes an article about the pregnancy cushions worn by boy actors for MM and other plays of the Renaissance.   Sara is an excellent model for our students as one who has worked both inside and outside academia, in her case at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.  She led me to the Manchester University series of performance histories, which are interesting, varied, and will hopefully be helpful in orienting the seminar participants. 

I spent much of my time struggling with the Restoration adaptations, assessing their stage-ability, and working to get into the mindsets of Davenant and Gildon who were bent on improving Shakespeare.  I even listened to a contemporary recording of the Davenant play by a group of non-professionals—a real surprise.  I didn’t think anybody bothered with that play and yet there it is, in the public domain. So I not only read Law Against Lovers but I listened to it as I went on my morning walks. 

I’ve been filled with this project and am going to be continuing to develop and polish the plans over the next year.  I am grateful that the Humanities Engage funding has allowed me to pick up a dropped stitch and to have a chance to do this scholarly work in a way that promises to be highly accessible. 

Syllabus: A Performance History of MEASURE FOR MEASURE (PDF)