Visualizing the White Devil

Woke up this morning still thinking about the thrilling White Devil that I saw at the RSC last night. What I loved about Maria Aberg’s production was (1) it was visual, aural, multimedial, spectacular, (2) it was SMART about the text without being slavish, and (3) it was about NOW. It was also one of the first RSC shows I’ve seen to use video projections in a genuinely interesting, integrated, and artistic way. I was sitting to stage left last night so I couldn’t always make out the washes of image and color that would intermittently stretch over the stage, but I could see enough to realize that they were augurs of sorts of what was to come. In their own abstracted and beautiful way they seemed to represent Flamineo’s claim that ‘Man may his fate forsee, but not prevent’.

The production had a strong sense of mise-en-scène and created several visual tableaus that echoed and perhaps even cited other recent filmic phenomena, among them Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza, the infamous ‘Blurred Lines’ video, The Sopranos, and Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. I can’t do a full review but I wanted to at least try to map out a few of these visual references with some of the pictures currently available from the production.

(1) ‘ORA PRO NOBIS’ = ‘PRAY FOR US’ (#thicke)

(2) The Cardinal and La Grande Bellezza‘s Jep Gambaradella – the most powerful men in Rome? They both wear white trousers too.

And this is pretty much exactly what Francisco wears, though I can’t find a picture:

But most important perhaps are are the opening party scenes, and especially the use of the hermetic white box behind plexiglass at the back of the stage, which reminded me very much of Jep’s 65th:

Why is it that the most antiseptic images are often the creepiest?

(3) A few more incidental echoes — Joan Iyiola’s Mercutian white wig and black mini-skirt, and Kirsty Bushell’s fallen angel:

(4) Cornelia as a slightly WASP-ier Carmela:

And finally, the necromancer and other thugs (no pictures, alas) as less Romantic versions of Furio, The Sopranos‘ most gentlemanly assasin:

All in all, BRILLIANT. Seriously, go see it. (And really SEE it.)

Shakespeare and Emotion — European style

A quick plug for a seminar on Shakespeare and emotion that I’m co-organizing with the excellent Kristine Steenbergh next year. It’s part of the European Shakespeare Research Association’s conference at the University of Worcester, 29 June – 2 July 2015. While the panel isn’t explicitly digital, people interested in the kinds of affective experiences digital Shakespeare produces are very much encouraged to get involved. There is a European focus, but it is broadly construed. Our aim is to have a mix of historical, literary, philosophical, and performance-oriented papers, so whatever your approach to Shakespeare, emotion, and affect please do consider submitting an abstract. More information below.

 

Shakespeare and European Communities of Emotion

Dr Erin Sullivan, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, e.sullivan@bham.ac.uk
Dr Kristine Steenbergh, VU University of Amsterdam, k.steenbergh@vu.nl

This seminar focuses on the importance of emotion in Shakespeare’s plays and poems and their significance within various European contexts. Acknowledging that emotion can be both culturally and historically contingent, as well as something shared across different cultures and communities, this seminar is interested in searching out the fault-lines of Shakespeare’s emotional registers and understanding their power to transcend different kinds of European boundaries, as well as reinforce them.

Papers in this seminar might take a historical approach, considering, for instance, how Shakespeare’s works participated in scholastic debates about the relationship between emotion and the body, the rhetoric of emotion, the role of emotion in politics and governance, or the ethics of emotion. They might in turn consider how religious change across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shaped Shakespeare’s representation of emotion and its place within spiritual devotion, personal piety, and holy ritual.

Other participants may choose to take a different approach, using literary readings or performance-based analyses to consider how emotion in Shakespeare has been interpreted more recently by European readers, philosophers, directors, actors, and audiences. Such papers might focus, for instance, on the role emotion has played in the acting styles developed by famous practitioners such as Stanislavski, Brecht, or Laban, and the subsequent effect this has had on Shakespearean performance, or on how particular emotions have been generated within the context of European national theatres, Shakespeare festivals, and other performance venues.

Whatever their preferred approach, participants in the seminar are invited to consider the extent to which emotion is a hallmark of Shakespeare’s literary and dramatic craft, and whether or not it is a constant, or at least translatable, feature across different European cultures and communities. To what extent does emotion in Shakespeare bring European readers, performers, and audiences together, and to what extent does push them apart?

If you’re interested please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and a brief biography (150 words) by 1 December 2014 to both me and Kristine. All participants will be notified about the acceptance of their proposals by 1 March 2015, and the deadline for submitting the completed seminar papers (3,000 words) will be 1 May 2015.

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