The first event of the Engendering Stage Project was the 2018 conference workshop at the Stratford Festival Laboratory. The workshop gathered scholars, Two-Spirit, trans, and non-binary guest artists, with actors from the Stratford company to explore scenes featuring sword-wielding women. This week at Stratford was a catalyst for much of the work that has followed. It is explored in depth in the project’s publication: Engendering the Stage in the Age of Shakespeare and Beyond (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2025).
In this section of the website we have archived the material from the conference, including the schedule of events, a video of the work, bios of all the collaborators, and the abstracts of the original articles that the scholars shared prior to the week at Stratford. Many of the scholars adapted their original papers for the book incorporating evidence from their experience at the workshop.
Callan Davies’s day to day documentation of the process, and his interviews with participants at the workshop can be found below through the Stratford Festival Laboratory Blogs link below. Emma Frankland who was such an important and influential contributor in 2018, was invited back to run her own workshop in 2019 and the blog includes Maddie Krusto’s account of her experience at Emma’s workshop .
Stratford Festival Laboratory Blogs
Original Schedule of Events at Stratford