Performing Environments ― Site-Specificity in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama

Performing Environments is an original and important collection examining site specificity in a diverse range of medieval and early modern performance cultures. The chapters take up theories of site specificity more commonly deployed in the study of contemporary work in order to raise new questions and suggest innovative approaches to the study of performance in the historical past.

The book provides an introduction to site specific theories as well as a review of the recent 'geographical turn' in medieval and early modern scholarship that frames the studies for both novice and expert readers. Individual chapters explore both theatrical performances and paratheatrical events through the lens of site specificity; together they not only interrogate the role and impact of place on experiences of production and reception, but also demonstrate how genealogies of performance might challenge more conventional literary periodization.

List of Contributors:
Patricia Badir, Susan Bennett, Sarah Crover, Elisabeth Dutton, Jim Ellis, Helen Ostovich, Vimala C. Pasupathi, Mary Polito, Joseph Rodriguez, Julie Sanders, Amy Scott, Kim Solga, Kevin Teo and Clare Wright.

Susan Bennett is University Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is widely published across a variety of theatre and performance studies topics, and her previous books include Theatre and Museums (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception (1997) and Performing Nostalgia: Shifting Shakespeare and the Contemporary Past (1996).

Mary Polito is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary, Canada. She has published on early modern theatre and performance culture, on Shakespeare in the present and recently co-edited (with Jacqueline Jenkins) a newly discovered seventeenth-century play manuscript for The Malone Society.