The Politics of Accessibility in Contemporary Shakespeare Performance: or, How Trans-Baiting Became an Arts Marketing Strategy

Event Type

Lecture

Sponsor

Department of Gender and Women's Studies

Date

Nov 12, 2020   4:00 pm  

Speaker

Sawyer Kemp, Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in Transgender Studies Gender and Women's Studies

Cost

Free

Registration

Zoom Webinar Link

Contact

sbs@illinois.edu

Views

12

Originating Calendar

Campus Humanities Calendar

This talk investigates how "access" operates within theatre institutions to obscure the very barriers it would seem to address. By looking at theatres who seek engagement by encouraging audiences to locate transgender themes and identities in Shakespeare's cross-dressing plays, we can see the tension between the theatre's aspirations of access and their resistance to actual connection with these and other "underserved" communities.