Following the opening of The Theatre in 1576, an innovative relationship developed between the newly-permanent space of the stage and the physical place of the theatre. The performative possibilities were quickly grasped and exploited by the men who came to write for the professional theatres, as they experimented with new ways of staging space in the Elizabethan playhouses: men such as Thomas Kyd, Thomas Lodge, Christopher Marlowe, George Peele, Robert Wilson, and the young William Shakespeare.
We invite proposals for individual papers (max. 20 minutes) on the processes and factors which created a sense of space and/or place in the Elizabethan theatre – including the language of the play-text, the physical presence of the players and playgoers, the actual performance space, and the technologies of the theatre. Possible topics may include (but are certainly not limited to) the following:
- The relationship between the real space of the theatre and imagined space;
- The influence of real factors such as the presence of the audience or even the weather upon the construction of stage space;
- The theatrical representation of geographical difference;
- The material construction of place through props and costume;
- The role of genre in the creation of stage-space;
- Inter-textual geography and the transmission of poetic geography between texts.
