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I think what really distinguishes this MA is that it's going to allow students to come
together as a group and do creative things, where students can end up producing a piece
of theatre as part of a group and as well as that, maybe curating an art exhibition
or doing research in archives and gaining skills of performance and working with the
RSC.
We do really hope that the programmes will engender new forms of academic criticism,
but we also that people interested in having a kind of credible qualification in the theatre,
or in arts administration, or other forms of creative vocational work will be drawn
to it and that they will bring the particular skills that they bring to the programme. The
programme's are about studying Shakespeare, but they are also about studying Shakespeare
as a way of leveraging and releasing your own creativity.
This is a programme which I think will be extremely pleasurable, not least because it
offers all the resources of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford, but also the Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust and the RSC and this fabulous new library in Birmingham.
What really attracts me about the Shakespeare and Creativity programmes is the opportunity
to put Shakespeare in his context in society. The collection of Shakespeare material at
the Library of Birmingham is amongst the best collections of Shakespeare anywhere in the
world. It's the largest public library in Europe and holds amongst the most significant
collections of archives, photographic collections and rare printed book collections in any public
library.
The RSC has worked quite closely with the Institute thinking about the set-up of the
programme and what we might offer and how we can attract students to Stratford and to
come and study at the Institute. We're going to be providing some teaching on the courses
and I suppose we've collaboratively thought about what the courses can offer.
We're delighted to be working with the University of Birmingham. There are two great Shakespeare
libraries in Stratford. One of them is at the Shakespeare Institute and one of them
is here and they complement each other very well. We have 55000 volumes relating to Shakespeare's
work, life and times, including about 1000 rare books which he would have seen for sale
on Jacobean and Elizabethan bookstalls and which we know he used in order to write the
plays.
So we can show where Shakespeare came from, where his creativity came from, the material
he was engaged with. You might like to come and design an exhibition based on precious
items in the collection. What stories might you tell about Stratford and Shakespeare?
Might they become performances in some of the Shakespeare gardens?
There are four core modules which are Shakespearience, Shakespeare and Society, Creative Practice
and The Shakespeare Ensemble.
The first module is Shakespearience, which I lead. The idea there is really to quite
simply unlock Shakespeare's text, Shakespeare's language in particular, as experientially
rich, as something which speaks to me or to you or doesn't work at all.
Creative Practice prepares students for performance. Essentially, they are examined by performing
two monologues or duologues from a Shakespeare play as well as writing an essay connected
to that.
The Shakespeare Ensemble course enables students to work as part of an ensemble to put together
a piece of work inspired by Shakespeare. It will include sessions that will be led by
the RSC in lighting design, design, new writing based on Shakespeare and what it means to
be part of an ensemble.
As far as I'm concerned that includes people who want to be creative writers, people who
want to be actors, people who want to be directors, people who are musicians, who are interested
in design, in the technical side of theatre. I think there's mileage for all of that.
And then we also have this course called Shakespeare in Society where students work with the fact
that Shakespeare has been at work in the world beyond the study and the seminar room and
the theatre for many centuries or for centuries at least.
Stratford is a fantastic place to study. I like to think of it as the whole town is almost
like a College. You can start a conversation at the Shakespeare Institute, that can continue
in the interval of a play that you might be seeing in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and
then the next morning when you're shopping in Henley Street outside the Birthplace or
in the library here.
Stratford's a really kind of magical place and there are moments of the year when it
comes to life and everybody is celebrating Stratford and Shakespeare and the fact that
Shakespeare came from Stratford. So, to come here to study theatre more broadly and Shakespeare,
I can't think of a better place to go.
The programme we've tried to devise is one which facilitates a kind of student, a shared
student-led adventure which will go where you want to go, which will discover and follow
the desire of any particular cohort. So we're particularly excited about teaching it because
we get to see where you take us.