Brush Up Your Shakespeare! Cymbeline Then and Now

Stephan Flores
Department of English
Matt Foss
Department of Theatre Arts

Tuesday, April 21, 2015
12:30 p.m.-1:30 p.m.
Ernest W. Hartung Theatre (Note: change of usual location)

Abstract

The presenters shall tag-team to talk about genre, gender, nationalism and performance in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, which opens April 30 at the Hartung Theatre. Rather than say more or too much about Cymbeline, perhaps your interest in our presentation and in the performance can be coaxed with Marjorie Garber’s comments on the play:

“Part history, part romance, part revenge tragedy, and part satire, incorporating pastoral themes and lyric songs of an unusual beauty, Cymbeline, King of Britain is a curious play, presenting one of Shakespeare’s most complicated and hard-to-summarize plots. ... There is nothing wrong with calling Cymbeline an experiment, unless by that we mean to undercut its standing as a play worth reading, staging, remembering, and discussing. For this is a play that tackles, and to a large extent solves, an intriguing set of problems about the relationship between political stories and psychological stories, between the sate or polity and the subject, and between the political fiction and the dream.” (Shakespeare After All)

For a complete schedule of performances, click here.

Biographies

Stephan Flores specializes in British literature. He teaches a range of courses from the survey of early British literature, Shakespeare, Restoration and 18th Century literature, to contemporary British fiction and critical theory, including a new graduate course this semester on theories of trauma and trauma in literature. His published research focuses on the cultural analysis of drama in the long 18th century (1660-1815). His scholarship includes an edition of Orrery's Henry the Fifth (1664) in The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century Drama. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon and a master’s and doctorate from the University of Michigan.

Matt Foss received an MFA in acting from Roosevelt University in Chicago and a Ph.D. in theatre studies and directing from Wayne State University in Detroit. Recent professional credits include Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Oracle Theatre, Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, American Blues Theatre, the Jewish Ensemble Theatre and Tipping Point Theatre. Dr. Foss also performed and trained in Russia as a part of the American Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre School. In 2012, his production of Six Characters at Iowa State University received the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival's National Award for Outstanding Production of a Play and Outstanding Director of a Play.