Associate Professor (Reader)

Email: S dot Purcell at warwick dot ac dot uk
Tel: +44 (0)24 7657 3091

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FAB 546

Faculty of Arts Building
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL

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About

Dr Stephen Purcell is Associate Professor (Reader), and teaches on the English and Comparative Literary Studies program. He joined Warwick in October 2011 from Southampton Solent University, where he co-developed and led the English Literature degree scheme. He also directs for the theatre company The Pantaloons.

Research interests

My research focuses on the performance of the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries on the modern stage and on screen. My particular research interests include theories of the audience, space, popular culture, parody, adaptation, and comedy, and I am as interested in ‘Shakespeare’ as a 20th- and 21st-century cultural phenomenon as I am in Shakespeare the dramatist. I regularly lead practical workshops on Shakespeare at conferences and elsewhere.

Teaching and supervision

I would be keen to supervise projects on Shakespeare and his contemporaries in performance, and on modern performance theory and practice. I am keen to encourage practice-as-research projects.

Completed PhD supervisions:

• Andrew Fletcher, ‘Shakespeare and the Fiction of Theatre’
• Julie Hudson, ‘The Environment on Stage: Scenery or Shapeshifter?’ (2017) co-supervised with Prof. Carol Rutter
• Angus Love, ‘Badiou’s Twisted Contemporaneity: Inaesthetics, Spectatorship and the Contemporary’ (Chancellor's), co-supervised with Prof.Thomas Docherty
• Sophie Shorland, ‘“Blazing Stars”: Early Modern Celebrity Culture, 1580-1626’ (CADRE)
• Alys Daroy, ‘Biophilic Shakespeare’ (Warwick Monash Alliance), co-supervised with Dr Paul Prescott and Dr Fiona Gregory (Monash).

Current PhD students:

• Yangzi Zhou, ‘“Live” is Elsewhere: Intermedial Theatricality in British Theatre Broadcasting Programmes, 2009-2020’ (China Scholarships Council / University of Warwick), co-supervised with Dr Tim White.

Selected publications

Monographs

• Shakespeare in the Theatre: Mark Rylance at the Globe (Arden Shakespeare, 2017)
• Shakespeare and Audience in Practice (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013)

• The Shakespeare Handbooks: The White Devil (Palgrave, 2012)

• Popular Shakespeare: Simulation and Subversion on the Modern Stage (Palgrave Shakespeare Studies, 2009)

Other publications

• ‘“I am here as a tourist”: on being a tourist-spectator’, in Shakespeare and Tourism (eds Robert Ormsby and Valerie Clayman Pye, Routledge, 2022)
• ‘Playing with the audience in Othello’, in Playing and Playgoing: Actor, Audience and Performance in Early Modern England (eds Simon Smith and Emma Whipday, Cambridge University Press, 2022)
• ‘The Player’s Game: The Activity of the Player in Early Modern Drama’, in Games and Theatre in Early Modern England (eds Erika T. Lin, Gina Bloom and Tom Bishop, Amsterdam University Press, 2021)
• ‘Locus and platea in modern Shakespearean performance’, in The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance (eds Peter Kirwan and Kathryn Prince, Bloombury / Arden Shakespeare, 2021)
• (with Paul Prescott) ‘Shakespeare Performances in England, 2019’ (Shakespeare Survey 73, 2020)
• (with Paul Prescott) ‘Shakespeare Performances in England, 2018’ (Shakespeare Survey 72, 2019)
• ‘Who are we talking about when we talk about the audience?’ in Shakespeare: Actors and Audiences (ed. Fiona Banks, Arden Shakespeare, 2018)
• ‘Shakespeare Performances in England, 2017’ (Shakespeare Survey 71, 2018)

• ‘Are Shakespeare’s plays always metatheatrical?’ (Shakespeare Bulletin 36:1, 2018)

• ‘Performing the Public at Shakespeare’s Globe’ (Shakespeare 14:1, 2018)

• ‘Whose Experiment is it Anyway?: Some Models for Practice-as-Research in Shakespeare Studies’ in Stage Matters: Props, Bodies and Space in Shakespearean Performance (eds Castaldo & Knight, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2018)

• ‘Shakespeare Performances in England, 2016’ (Shakespeare Survey 70, 2018)

• ‘‘It’s All a Bit of a Risk’: Reformulating ‘Liveness’ in Twenty-First Century Performances of Shakespeare’ in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance (ed James C. Bulman, Oxford University Press, 2017)

• ‘Practice-as-Research and Original Practices’ (Shakespeare Bulletin 35:3, 2017)

• ‘Shakespeare in Amateur Production’ in The Shakespearean World (eds Levenson & Ormsby, Routledge, 2017)
• ‘Synecdoches and Symbols: Fictional Performances of King Lear’ (Litteraria Pragensia 26:52, 2017)
• ‘Shakespeare Performances in England (and Wales), 2015’ (Shakespeare Survey 69, 2016)
• ‘Editing for Performance or Documenting Performance?: Exploring the Relationship Between Early Modern Text and Clowning’ (Shakespeare Bulletin 34:1, 2016)
• ‘The International Language of Physical Theatre at the 2012 Globe to Globe Festival’ (Shakespeare Jahrbuch 151, 2015)
• ‘Shakespeare, Spectatorship, and the “Olympic Spirit”’ in Shakespeare on the Global Stage (eds Prescott & Sullivan, Arden Shakespeare, 2015)

• ‘The Impact of New Forms of Public Performance’ in Shakespeare and the Digital World (eds Carson & Kirwan, Cambridge University Press, 2014)

• ‘“What Country, Friends, Is This?”: Cultural Identity and the World Shakespeare Festival’ (Shakespeare Survey 66, 2013)
• ‘Touch and Taboo in Rah-e-Sabz’ The Comedy of Errors’ in Shakespeare Beyond English (eds Bennett & Carson, Cambridge University Press, 2013)

• Reviews of The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Pericles and Troilus and Cressida in A Year of Shakespeare: Re-Living the World Shakespeare Festival (eds Edmondson, Prescott & Sullivan, Arden Shakespeare, 2013)

• ‘Shakespeare on Television’ in The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts (eds Burnett, Streete & Wray, Edinburgh University Press, 2011)

• ‘Marcello Magni’ in The Routledge Companion to Actors’ Shakespeare (eds Brown & Ewert, Routledge, 2011)

• ‘“That’s not Shakespeare”: Policing the Boundaries of “Shakespeare” in Reviews’(Shakespeare 6:3, 2010)

Qualifications

• BA; MA; PhD (Kent)