Our international research collaboration encompasses two interrelated strands of inquiry.

Engendering the Stage in the Age of Shakespeare and Beyond

This project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is the first sustained use of Performance as Research to explore resonances between the history of gendered performance on the early modern stage and our contemporary drive to achieve gender equity in today’s professional theatre industry.

Uniting scholars, actors, and theatre practitioners, our team uses embodied practice to step beyond the myth of the all-male stage, centring feminist, queer, and trans scholars and artists to reveal the deeper complexities of gendered performance on stage today and within the records of theatre history.

Learn more from our edited volume and watch this video about our work at the Stratford Festival Laboratory:

Engendering the Stage: The Records of Early Modern Performance

This project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, investigates the archival evidence for performance by women, children and gender nonconforming performers in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century England. Findings include documentary traces of performance by a diversity of performers in country houses, at fairgrounds, touring companies, and inside the playhouses, along with evidence that women invested in at least one of those playhouses and so were active members of the Shakespearean theatre industry.

Our project team have written two doctoral theses. We will also share our findings in a co-edited essay collection, a monograph, and a co-authored journal article.