Symposium Two Long Programme

Symposium Two – Programme
Filming and Performing
Renaissance History
Representing Conflict, Crisis and Nation
19-21 September 2008
Symposium Two Programme
Filming and Performing Renaissance History:
Representing Conflict, Crisis and Nation
Friday, 19 September
Speakers’ Dinner: 7.30 (Gourmet Burger Bank, 33-35 Malone Road)
Saturday, 20 September
Paper Session One: 9.00-11.00
(Graduate Research Centre, 18 College Green)
Chair: Adele Lee, Queen’s University, Belfast
Early Modern England
as a Site of Conflict in 1916
Clara Calvo, University of Murcia
In 1916, the Western Front and the North Sea were not the only sites of conflict.
At a time when the Great War had become a World War, with battle scenarios in
several continents, some of the most enduring battles were fought at the Home
Front. The 1916 Tercentenary turned Shakespeare’s England and contemporary
representations of the Renaissance into a site of conflicting views, needs and desires.
This paper aims to examine several areas in which early modern English culture
provided occasion for conflict, mostly focusing on people (Queen Elizabeth in relation
to Mary Stuart, Bacon in relation to Shakespeare) media (film in relation to theatre)
and nation (Germany in relation to England).
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Private Lives and Public Conflicts:
The English Renaissance on Film, 1998-2008
Andrew Higson, University of East Anglia
Despite the cultural prominence of Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love, filmic versions
of the English Renaissance in the last ten years have been few and far between.
Questions of nationhood and empire-building, political power and religious authority,
inheritance and control, repeatedly emerge across the few films that do exist, from
the machinations around Henry VIII’s desire to produce a male heir (The Other Boleyn
Girl), via Elizabeth’s struggle to maintain English sovereignty (Elizabeth and Elizabeth:
The Golden Age), and the emergence of new colonies in America (Shakespeare in
Love and The New World), to the rise to power of Oliver Cromwell (To Kill a King).
Prominent though these themes are, such films are more likely to be promoted and
discussed in terms of their attention to the private lives of monarchs and other
historical personalities. Affairs of the heart thus take prominence over the public
crises and conflicts that tend to constitute the backdrop in these period films. As
such, while for some audiences these may be films about Renaissance history, for
others they are simply variants on the romance or costume drama or tasteful
middlebrow cinema, and that is how they work as industrial commodities. This paper
will consider these issues by exploring the production, promotion and reception of
this handful of films, situating them in relation to wider developments in the media
business, filmic tradition and representations of the English Renaissance.
Mirrors of Absolute Power and National Crisis in
Renaissance England and Moldavia
Gabriela Colipca and Ligia Pârvu
‘Dunarea de Jos’ University of Galati
¸
Over the latter half of the fifteenth century and the early part of the sixteenth
century, the Romanian Principality of Moldavia enjoyed a period of welfare, cultural
development and political stability, which was, nonetheless, dearly paid for at the
expense of bloody wars against the invading Turks, coming from the south, and the
raiding Polish troops of King John Albert I, who were ravaging the north. It is to
Prince Stephen the Great (1457-1504), who ruled at this time, that the Romanians in
Moldavia owed their sense of national identity and pride. Indeed, Europe as whole,
arguably, owed a debt for the defence of Christian faith against the threatening
conquest policy of the Turkish empire. It is true that many aspects of this Moldavian
prince’s life have occasionally turned him into the subject of controversy – a good
case in point would be his amorous life (he was known as ‘a man of many women
and of even more illegitimate children’) – but that did not prevent subsequent
generations from looking upon him as being one of the greatest princes ever in
Romanian history.
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A quick overview of Stephen the Great’s life and achievements would easily reveal
striking similarities with Henry VIII’s. Their strong rule and ability to maintain the
centralized power of the state, their claims to absolute authority, based on divine
right, over both church and state, their conflict with the Pope that eventually
required radical action (the Reformation in Henry’s case, the compromise solution of
a treaty with the Turks in Stephen’s), even their amorous lives, and the political chaos
following their deaths under the rule of their heirs to the throne – all have invited
such a parallel. Both Henry VIII’s and Stephen the Great’s heritages, though separated
in time and especially space, are undeniably related to the crisis of Christianity,
opposing Catholicism to Protestantism, on the one hand, and to Orthodoxy, on the
other, and to the emergence of a new sense of national identity that was to ensure
success and endurance in different political contexts.
This paper aims at sustaining the validity of the parallel drawn between these two
figures of absolute rulers not only by relying on historical facts, but also by making
reference to two pertinent plays, namely William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (1623) and
¸
Barbu Stefanescu
Delavrancea’s Apus de Soare (Sunset) (1909). Both works examine
moments of political crisis, attempts at undermining royal authority by treacherous
courtiers (Cardinal Wolsey, in particular, in Shakespeare’s play, and the boyars Ulea,
Stavar and Dragan, in Delavrancea’s), as well as the issue of succession to the throne
(through the reference to Elizabeth I’s birth and, respectively, the competition for the
throne between Stephen’s son, Bogdan, and his nephew, Stefanita).
¸
¸ At the same
time, these plays equally point to the specificity of the political context in which
Henry VIII and Stephen the Great ruled, since the two writers – Shakespeare and
Delavrancea – choose to foreground different thematics: the former takes more
interest in the conflict with Rome, while the latter insists on Stephen’s contribution
within the framework of Romanian national identity construction.
Coffee/Tea Break
Interview Event: 11.30-12.30
Interview between Mark Thornton Burnett, Queen’s University, Belfast, and Professor
Frank McGuinness (University College, Dublin), playwright. Frank McGuinness is
Ireland’s leading playwright. He has won numerous awards and international acclaim
for his powerful dramatizations of, among other periods, World War I, for his poetry
collections, screenplays and translations. Today, however, he will reflect in interview
upon his three Renaissance-based plays, Innocence (in which the treatment of
Caravaggio touches upon questions of sexuality, morality and belief), Mutabilitie
(here, the characterization of Spenser and Shakespeare enables a provocative
disquisition upon literary myth and historical reality) and Speaking Like Magpies
(an eloquent retelling of the Gunpowder Plot from modern perspectives).
Lunch: 12.30-2.00
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Film Event: 2.00-4.30
(Screen 2, Queen’s Film Theatre, 20 University Square)
Chair: Ramona Wray, Queen’s University, Belfast
The Flight of the Earls:
From the Annals to the Screen
Antaine Ó Donnaíle, BBC
Drawing from his experiences as writer and producer of the BBC documentary series,
The Flight of the Earls, Dr Antaine Ó Donnaíle discusses some of the challenges
which confront producers and directors working on historical documentaries for
television. While text-based academic work can test, tease out and explore
arguments in great detail, a television script needs to be clear, accessible to a wide
audience and confident of its position. The producer/director must try to distill quite
difficult issues, personalities and events into a coherent and compelling narrative
which also maintains accuracy and balance. The burden of responsibility is even
greater when there are conflicting versions of history. This paper also discusses how
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries can present particular challenges
for those wishing to represent them visually.
This paper will be followed by an exclusive conference screening of
The Flight of the Earls in the Queen’s Film Theatre.
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Workshop: 4.30-6.00
(Graduate Research Centre, 18 College Green)
Chair: Emma Rhatigan, Queen’s University, Belfast
‘The Winner Takes it All’:
Conflict in the Visual Perspective
Ruth Abraham (Queen’s University, Belfast) and
Majella Devlin (Queen’s University, Belfast)
This workshop will investigate questions surrounding filmic and theatrical
constructions of crisis, conflict and nation in the Renaissance period. Is there an
argument that, in hindsight, war and conflict is generally visually presented from the
winners’ perspective? To what extent does the perspective of the performance speak
to political and cultural concerns of the era in which it is set as well as the moment in
which it is produced? What type of conflict is represented? Are the broader areas of
national war and internal religious conflict the only ones that receive attention?
Are minor conflicts, pertinent to the early modern period but inconsequential in the
modern era, generally overlooked? Do those minor events that are portrayed on
stage and screen warrant such attention or are they simply a means to an end?
To what extent are current concerns and anxieties projected onto the portrayal
of conflict in the past?
Speakers’ Dinner: 8.00 (Beatrice Kennedy’s Restaurant, 44 University Road)
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Sunday 21 September
Paper Session Two: 9.30-11.00
(Graduate Research Centre, 18 College Green)
Chair: Paul Frazer, Queen’s University, Belfast
Representing the Spanish Armada
of 1588 in the Twenty-First Century:
Or, Renaissance Romance and
Tragedy in a Glass Case
Winifred Glover, Ulster Museum
The Spanish Armada of 1588 is one of the most memorable historical events and
is a story which resonates through the ages. The Armada exhibition for the newlyrefurbished Ulster Museum, which will open in mid-2009, weaves the story round
some two hundred objects and hundreds of gold and silver coins. While the treasures
recovered from the galleass Girona, which sank off the north Antrim coast on the
morning of 26 October 1588, illustrate many aspects of sixteenth-century century
life, the emotions they and their story arouse are very relevant to a twenty-first
century audience. This paper addresses the practicalities of representing these in
a museum setting.
British Identity, Historical Film and
the Inequities of Old Enemies
Jonathan Durrant, University of Glamorgan
Historical films set in the early modern period have been the focus of debates
about the rise of the heritage-film genre and the cultural presentation of late
twentieth-century British identity. These debates tend to highlight positive aspects
of that evolving identity as they have been reflected in the characters of heroes or
heroines (notably, Elizabeth I), the triumph of the Reformation, and, most recently,
victory over the Spanish Armada. Alongside these aspects, however, one can find a
series of neglected, negative stereotypes of former enemies: mincing, cross-dressing
Frenchmen, swarthy, Machiavellian Spaniards, and psychotic, over-ambitious homegrown Catholics. Whilst these stereotypes are rooted in Elizabethan nationalist
propaganda, the very fact that they have remained relatively static whilst portrayals
of Elizabeth I have clearly evolved invites comment.
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This paper examines these negative stereotypes in the light of the debate about
historical film and identity and against a backdrop of imperial ambition, the Cold
War, Euro-skepticism, immigration and the war on terror. It will argue that they might
reflect an underlying Britishness which is exclusive to a narrow, mainly middle-class
audience ambivalent about the world beyond its Anglo-American purview, despite
the use of established foreign actors in, for example, Elizabeth and the lionizing of
its director, Shekhar Kapur.
Coffee/Tea Break
Paper Session Three: 11.30-1.00
Chair: Mary-Ellen Lynn, Queen’s University, Belfast
Tuckets, Tongs and Bones:
A Consensus of Musical Authenticity within
the Reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
Claire Van Kampen,
Director of Theatre Music, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 1996-2005
Sam Wanamaker’s reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe theatre on Bankside has
allowed us to examine – and re-examine – both what we might mean by the term
‘authenticity’ and Shakespeare’s textual instructions for the performance of period
music and instrumentation within the Elizabethan wooden amphitheatre.
Over the course of ten years, the Globe’s mission to explore the original playing
practices of Shakespeare’s company created a unique theatrical form. Rigorous
attention to text, clothing, music, properties and music of Shakespeare’s period,
and the discovery of creating an egalitarian relationship with a standing audience,
without stage lighting or sets, produced an audience who by 2005 had arrived at
a consensus about period authenticity.
I will be sharing the discoveries made through performance in the Globe, and the
conclusions that the experiment so far has enabled us to draw in determining the
specificity and variety of the use of music with Shakespeare’s play-texts both in the
outdoor amphitheatre and in the Inns of Court (in particular, Middle Temple Hall)
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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‘Its Very VIOLENT (Death)’:
Children, Performance, and Renaissance History
Kate Chedgzoy, University of Newcastle
How do children learn about the Renaissance through performance? What happens
to what we think we know about Renaissance history and culture when it is
transformed into a mode of performance aimed at children, or staged to include their
participation? This paper explores what is at stake when the Renaissance is mediated
to children through performance, with reference to examples ranging from the
1990s’ TV series based on the nineteenth-century novel of the Civil War, The Children
of the New Forest, via ‘The Terrible Tudors’, the popular stage version of one of Terry
Deary’s ‘Horrible Histories’ books, to an abbreviated workshop production of
Macbeth recently staged by 10 and 11 year olds in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Lunch: 1.00-2.30 (Café Renoir, 95 Botanic Avenue)
Organizer: Professor Mark Thornton Burnett
Code for Graduate Centre: 57646#
Code for Queen’s Film Theatre: 16858#
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Design: Rodney Miller Associates, Belfast
CDS N111281