Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars (Shakespeare Now!) - Softcover

Amy Scott-Douglass; Simon Palfrey; Ewan Fernie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826486991 ISBN 13: 9780826486998

Publisher: Continuum, 2011

Synopsis

Shakespeare Inside goes behind the scenes to reveal Shakespeare at work in the most decisive institutional context of our time - in prisons. Based upon the author's experience of watching prison yard rehearsals and performances, and interviewing inmates, program directors, and wardens, Shakespeare Inside is not an objective, dispassionate account of how Shakespeare is bastardized by repressive institutions but offers a record of fiercely personal experiences. We hear ex-offender Mike Smith detail how playing Desdemona was vital to his rehabilitation; we sit in the audience of women inmates as they respond to the all-male Shakespeare Behind Bars touring production of Julius Caesar and we listen to a chorus of unnamed voices explain how rewriting Hamlet helps them to survive solitary confinement. Shakespeare Inside probes any assumptions we might have about Shakespeare's performative function and asks what - if anything - is the proper place of Shakespeare in today's society.

About this title

Product Description:

Rare Book

Review:

"This is a wonderfully honest book. We really get to meet the inmates and see how Shakespeare has changed their lives. One cannot help being deeply moved by a prisoner who says, 'Shakespeare still lives even though he's dead. His spirit lives on. A lot of things that he wrote are happening in the world today.' The truth of this insight, and its special pertinence to those who are in prison, is borne out again and again in this totally absorbing and engagingly written book." David Bevington, Departments of English and Comparative Literature, University of Chicago, editor of Complete Works of Shakespeare

[Scott-Douglass] craft(s) a deeply personal, and engrossing account of the ways in which 'secured Shakespeare programs' confront many of the same issues that trouble Shakespeare scholars...
What makes these interviews lively to read, rather than a flat series of transcriptions is Amy's felt presence on the page. I take the liberty of citing her by first name precisely because she conveys a persona throughout the study that invites familiarity...
She manages to connect us even with those whose faces she cannot see in the most chilling isolated maximum-security cellblocks...
Shakespeare Inside offers a compelling story that resists saccharine platitudes without curtailing empathy.'
Scott L. Newstok, Rhodes College, USA,
Review in The Upstart Crow, Summer 2007.

'[this book] is anecdotal rather than analytical, but the scenes she [Amy Scott-Douglass] describes are richly provocative...Prison, we discover, is one of the last bastions of unapologetic bardolatry.'
Oliver Harris, TLS, December 2007.

-Mention. Daily Telegraph/April 8, 2007--,

-Mention. Daily Telegraph/ April 8, 2007--,

"Where is Shakespeare now? This question is the brief for a new series of short books from Continuum, an enterprising publisher trying to break down the border between academic literary criticism and books for the thoughtful general reader.
Amy Scott-Douglass's book Shakespeare Inside based on observations and interviews, reveals how Shakespeare really can change lives." Jonathan Bate, The Sunday Telegraph--Sanford Lakoff "Sunday Telegraph "

-Mention. Daily Telegraph/ April 8, 2007--Sanford Lakoff

"Scott-Douglass's book is especially powerful because she captures these prisoners' lives in all of their complexity...Shakespeare provides beauty; catharsis; empathy for their victims; therapy." -Studies in English Literature--Sanford Lakoff

"The author faced her fears, a decision, she says, that resulted in one of 'the most important and enlightening experiences of [her] adult life.' Based on observations and interviews, Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars offers a voyeuristic peek inside the prison theatre program at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in La Grange, Kentucky...like an 'adventure story.'" - Text and Presentation--Sanford Lakoff "Tidings "

"The ambitious project of the "Shakespeare NOW "series is to bridge the gap between 'scholarly thinking and a public audience' and 'public audience and scholarly thinking'. Scholars are encouraged to write in a way accessible to a general readership and readers to rise to the challenge and not be afraid of new ideas and the adventure they offer. There are other bridges the series is ambitious to cross: 'formal, political or theoretical boundaries' - history and philosophy, theory, and performance."
"English Vol. 58, 2009"

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0826486991
• ISBN 13: 9780826486998
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160