The “disproportionate representation” of William Shakespeare has propagated “white, healthy, heterosexual, cisgender male narratives” in theatre, according to a taxpayer-funded study.
In an £800,000 project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, researchers at the University of Roehampton attempted to challenge this “normative trend” by mounting a production of Gallathea, which features costumed characters of the opposite sex.
The academics said the 16th-century comedy, by Shakespeare’s contemporary John Lyly, “has had almost no stage history since 1588.”
The AHRC-funded project is dedicated to “centering marginalized communities in the contemporary performance of early modern plays.”
But critics have accused the council, which is mainly funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, of promoting “cultural clickbait”.
A portrait of William Shakespeare. An £800,000 project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council claims the “disproportionate representation” of William Shakespeare has propagated “white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender male narratives” in theatre.
William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. Researchers at the University of Roehampton attempted to challenge the “normative trend” by staging a production of Gallathea, which features costumed characters of the opposite sex. Scholars said the 16th-century comedy, by John Lyly, “has had almost no stage history since 1588.”
The University of Roehampton where the study takes place. A spokesperson for the University of Roehampton said: “This project was funded by a national organization following a rigorous review process.”
In an article for the Before Shakespeare website, Andy Kesson, lead researcher on the project, said that “masculinity and nationalism were crucial motivating factors in Shakespeare’s rise as an arbiter of literary greatness” and that “(we) need to be much, much more “suspicious” of the Bard’s place in contemporary theatre.
Author Lionel Shriver he told the Sunday Telegraph that Shakespeare would survive “this dogmatic destruction”, adding: “His works will continue to be enjoyed long after today’s ‘intersectional’ performances have been reduced to a strange, comical footnote in theater history.”
Comedian Andrew Doyle said: “There is a very good reason why Shakespeare is performed frequently and John Lyly barely.”
‘Shakespeare was by far the superior playwright. Once again, ideologues are reducing great art to mere mechanisms for the promotion of an ideology.
Conservative MP Jane Stevenson, who sits on the culture, media and sport committee, said she was “totally in favor of expanding the repertoire”, but added: “I’m not sure I would reduce Galatea to a celebration of all things woke. or criticize Shakespeare for being pale.” , masculine and rancid is much more than cultural bait.
A spokesperson for the Arts and Humanities Research Council said it “invests in a diverse portfolio of research and innovation” and that projects are subject to “a rigorous peer review process by relevant independent experts”.
A spokesperson for the University of Roehampton said: “This project was funded by a national organization following a rigorous review process.”
Cisgender is used to describe a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex at birth.
Author Lionel Shriver (pictured) told the Sunday Telegraph that Shakespeare would survive “this dogmatic destruction”, adding: “His works will continue to be enjoyed long after today’s ‘intersectional’ performances have been reduced to an odd note comic footnote in the history of the theater”.
Conservative MP Jane Stevenson (pictured), who sits on the culture, media and sport committee, said she was “totally in favor of expanding the repertoire” but added: “I’m not sure about reducing Galatea to a celebration of all things awake, or to discard Shakespeare. Because being pale, masculine and stale is much more than cultural bait.
The term was coined in 1994 by Dana Defosse, then a graduate student in the United States, who used it in one of the first online forums while researching campus views on transphobia and inclusion at the University of Minnesota.
Ms. Defosse told HuffPost last year that she had been looking for a way to describe “people who were not transgender without inescapably wrapping them in normalcy and making transgender identity automatically the ‘other.’”
He came up with the prefix ‘cis-‘ because in chemistry, molecules with atoms grouped on the same side are labeled with the Latin prefix, while molecules with atoms grouped on opposite sides are called ‘trans-‘.
The word entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2016.
The University of Roehampton project, called “Diverse Alarums”, will be completed within two years.
