About

Dr Ronan Hatfull joined the department at Warwick in 2020. He is a scholar of Shakespeare, adaptation and performance. He received his doctorate in 2019 from Warwick, having completed the first investigation into the history and legacy of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Ronan is also the SCAPVC Events Co-Ordinator and an Events and Festival Assistant for the department.

Ronan also teaches as an Associate Tutor in English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick, teaching on Epic to Novel and European Theatre. He has published widely on Shakespeare’s legacy on page, stage and screen, including the Bridge Theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the films All Is True and Bill, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the television series Doctor Who, Game of Thrones and Upstart Crow, and the novelist Cormac McCarthy.

Ronan is the Artistic Director of theatre company Partners Rapt, formed the lockdown performance collective Partners Rapt Read Plays, and has written for Shakespeare Bulletin, Reviewing Shakespeare and Action is eloquence: (Re)thinking Shakespeare. He is currently working on two monographs, one based on his doctoral thesis and the other in collaboration with pedagogic hip-hop artist The Sonnet Man: Shakespeare and Hip-Hop: Adaptation, Citation, Education. Ronan will be co-leading seminars and roundtables at three international conferences next year on biographical fiction, fracking Shakespeare and roughhouse Shakespeare.

Research interests

• Adaptation studies
• Biographical fiction
• Contemporary British Theatre
• Metamodernism
• Reduction and abridgement
• Shakespeare and popular culture
• Shakespeare in performance

Teaching and supervision in 2021/22

• Adapting Shakespeare for Performance
• Contemporary Performance Practices
• From Text to Performance
• Toolkit

Previous teaching

• Acting in Character (2020-21)
• British Theatre Since 1939 (2019-20) (Convenor)
• European Theatre (2020)
• From Text to Performance (2020-21)
• Remaking Shakespeare (2016-20)
• You, The Performer: presence and affect (2020-21)

Selected publications

Monographs

Forthcoming:

• Shakespeare in the Theatre: Reduced Shakespeare Company (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare). Proposal sent to Bloomsbury at invitation of series editors.

• Shakespeare and Hip-Hop: Adaptation, Citation, Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Editorials

Forthcoming:

• Teaching Shakespeare Issue 21: Teaching Shakespeare in Lockdown (British Shakespeare Association, 2021).

Book chapters

Recent:

• ‘Bill Begins: The Rise of the Contemporary Shakespeare “Origin Story”’ in Irreverence and Play in Shakespearean Adaptation (Routledge Studies in Shakespeare), ed. Marina Gerzić and Aidan Norrie (New York and London: Routledge, 2020).
• "Keeping the Dream Alive': Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2019)' in Critical Insights into A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Salem Press, 2020).

Journal articles

Forthcoming:

• ‘“The Counterfeit Presentment”: Resisting and Rehabilitating Shakespeare in Fakespeare’ in Shakespeare and Fan-Fiction (TBC, 2022). Abstract accepted by editors.
• ‘“You Mean to Make A Puppet of Me”: Shakespeare Made Miniature’ in Shakespeare Bulletin (John Hopkins University Press, 2022). Chapter proposed to editors pending peer-review.

• ‘“Sharlowe” - Representing Shakespeare and Marlowe in ‘Twenty-First Century Biographical Fiction’ in Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation (2022).

• ‘“My dearest partner of greatness”: The legacy of the Macbeths’ relationship in House of Cards and Vice’ in Coup de théâtre (2022).

• Ten entries for The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Global Shakespeare, ed. Alexa Alice Joubin (Palgrave, 2021). Peer-reviewed online collection.
  
  • Edinburgh Fringe Festival
  • House of Cards (2013-18)
  • Oldboy, dir. Park Chan-wook (2003)
  • Parasite, dir. Bong Joon-ho (2019)
  • Reduced Shakespeare Company
  • Shakespeare Live! From The RSC (2016)
  • Stoker, dir. Chan-wook Park (2013)
  • Tennant, David
  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008–present)
  • The Show Must Go Online (lockdown YouTube Shakespeare series)

Recent:

• ‘Adapting The Merchant of Venice for Radio: An Interview with Emma Harding, adapter and director for BBC Radio Drama’ in Shakespeare (Taylor & Francis, 2021).

• ‘“That’s One of Mine”: The Upstart Cannibal in Shakespearean Biofiction’ in Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal 7.3 (The Institute of Advanced Study, 2020).

• ‘“Shakespeare in the Park?”: William Shakespeare and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’ in Shakespeare and Science–Fiction Special Issue of Foundation (Foundation, 2019).

• ‘“Some Scurrilous King”: Judge Holden and the Spectre of Shakespeare’s Monarchs in Blood Meridian’ in Postgraduate English 35 (2017) 1–27.

• ‘“Excess of It”: William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016’ in Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal 4.1 (The Institute of Advanced Study, 2016) 61–67.

Reviews

Forthcoming:

• 'Play Review: Romeo and Juliet (National Theatre)' in Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies (2021).
• ‘The Complete Deaths’ in Shakespeare Bulletin (John Hopkins University Press, 2021).

In publication:

• ‘All Is True’ in Shakespeare Bulletin (John Hopkins University Press, 2021).
• ‘Upstart Crow: Season 3’ in Shakespeare Bulletin (John Hopkins University Press, 2019).
• ‘Macbeth @ The National Theatre, dir. Rufus Norris, 2018’ in Reviewing Shakespeare.
• ‘King Lear at the Old Vic, dir. Deborah Warner, 2016’ in Reviewing Shakespeare.

Selected Online Publications

• “I’m Jay-Z on a bad day, Shakespeare on my worst days”: When rappers cite Shakespeare in Shakespeare & Beyond (Folger Shakespeare Library (2021)
• ‘An Interview with Rob Myles of The Show Must Go Online’ in ‘Action is eloquence’: (Re)thinking Shakespeare (2020).
• “‘I’ll Teach You How To Flow”: The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Pedagogy of the Sonnet Man’ in ‘Action is eloquence’: (Re)thinking Shakespeare (2020).
• ‘“Let the Devil Wear Black”: Shakespeare’s Bio-fictional Presence in Good Omens’ in ‘Action is eloquence’: (Re)thinking Shakespeare (2020).
• ‘“Finally You Put Me First”: Love on Top in NT Live: A Midsummer Night’s Dream @ The Bridge Theatre in ‘Action is eloquence’: (Re)thinking Shakespeare (2020).
• ‘Why Judge Holden is one of literature’s greatest villains’ in Research English at Durham (2018).

Professional associations

• Associate Fellow of Advance HE (AFHEA)
• Member of the Association of Adaptation Studies (AAS).
• Member of the British Shakespeare Association (BSA).
• Member of the European Research Shakespeare Association (ESRA).
• Member of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA).

Qualifications

• PhD: English and Comparative Literary Studies (University of Warwick)
• MA: Shakespeare and Creativity (The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham)
• BA: English and Theatre Studies (University of Warwick)

Practice and Outreach

• 2020-21: Guest Speaker on the Reduced Shakespeare Company podcast episodes: Episode 748: Analyzing Shakespearean Biofiction and Episode 749: More Shakespearean Biofiction, where I discussed the running of a seminar on Shakespearean biofiction at SAA 2021 with my co-seminar leader Dr Edel Semple.
• 2020-present: Co-Founder/Artistic Director of Partners Rapt Read Plays, a theatre collective which participates in weekly play readings of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries on Zoom. I established this initiative in response to the Covid-19 lockdown in order to provide professional and amateur theatre-makers and performers with creative opportunities. I am responsible for conceptual design and dramaturgy. The performances have included international participation from France, Italy, UK and USA.
• 2019-20: Workshop Leader for Transformations.
• 2019-20: Co-Founder/Writer at ‘Action is eloquence’: (Re)thinking Shakespeare in October 2019, a blog which focuses on Shakespeare in adaptation and performance and is listed in the World Shakespeare Bibliography, receiving considerable exposure since its launch.
• 2018-19: Co-Designer and Writer for Walk You Will, an interdisciplinary, charity project and exhibition with the photographer, David Hatfull, in collaboration with Dr Paul Edmondson and Professor Sir Stanley Wells.
• 2018-19: Guest Speaker on the Reduced Shakespeare Company podcast: Episode 627: Doctor of Reduction, where I discussed the completion of my PhD.
• 2017-18: Guest Speaker on the Reduced Shakespeare Company podcast: Episode 505: Retracing Shakespeare’s Steps, where I discussed Walk You Will.
• 2016-17: Guest Speaker on the Reduced Shakespeare Company podcast: Episode 488: Studying Reduced Shakespeare, where I discussed by PhD research into the company with Managing Partner Austin Tichenor.
• 2016-present: Writer for The 730 Review, an online arts publication for which I have contributed theatre, film and music reviews, opinion pieces and interviews.

Partners Rapt

• I am the Artistic Director and a founding member of Partners Rapt, an emerging theatre company which specialises in the reinterpretation of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
• My directing credits at Warwick include Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, The Tempest and Twelfth Night, as well as several new writing projects, including my first play, Not You Will, which was awarded a grant from Warwick's Institute of Advanced Teaching and Learning, enabling me to film the project with a professional actor.
• At the Shakespeare Institute, I continued to pursue my interest in new writing, including collaborating on Shakespeare Unbard (staged at the RSC in 2013); working as Co-Head Writer on Running Brook; and writing Partners Rapt, which explores Shakespeare’s power couples and their role within popular culture.
• Partners Rapt was staged in January 2015 at Warwick, funded by the University’s new writing and Shakespeare societies. An extract was published in Inspired by Shakespeare in April 2016, a new book celebration the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.
• I received a £1000 grant from IATL in 2015 to pursue research into staging dystopia through the work of William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett and Cormac McCarthy, culminating in a collaborative performance during June 2015 entitled This Blasted Heath.
• I served as adapter, dramaturg and composer on Julius Caesar, a production rehearsed throughout the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and performed a week after Donald Trump's election, exploring the resonance of Shakespeare's play with those political events.
• I next served as dramaturg for an immersive 2017 production of Macbeth, which explored the cold war and gated communities.
• In Summer 2017, I created two outdoor productions: Hell is Empty, a new play which imagines a purgatorial meeting between Iago, Cleopatra and Falstaff after their deaths, and a site-specific production of Twelfth Night.
• I have served as Actor/Composer/Musician in productions of The Comedy of Errors (2017), Much Ado About Nothing (2018) and As You Like It (2019) at the Royal Shakespeare Company's open-air Dell Festival.

Performance and Research Footage

Presenting research at the Shakespeare Institute (2016).

Performing at the RSC (2013)