Dramatizing Penshurst: "Love's Victory" and the Sidneys

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'Dramatizing Penshurst' brings to life the remarkable literary history of the Sidney family by staging 'Love's Victory' (1617), by Lady Mary Wroth at her home, Penshurst Place. Wroth was the daughter of Robert Sidney and niece of Sir Philip Sidney and Mary Sidney Herbert, who transformed the literary landscape of the 16th and 17th centuries. Penshurst was a crucible for innovation amidst tradition, an experience which the project recreates for members of the public through rehearsals and performances. It inaugurates Penshurst's strategy for the next 25 years to leverage the house's cultural capital, making sustained use of a historic literary text to deepen visitor engagement with the past. Staging the play 400 years after it was composed disproves Virginia Woolf's view that any sister of Shakespeare could not have written drama. The production, performed by professional actors at Penshurst Place and in the newly-established Marlowe Kit in Canterbury City Centre, will uncover a 'hidden' heritage: the history of Shakespeare's 'sisters' or female contemporary dramatists. The play has almost no recorded stage history. The public will be able to judge its value alongside plays like Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'. The rehearsals and performances at Penshurst Place will give people a chance to participate for the first time in a historically-informed piece of household theatre. This theatrical tradition was very different from that of the professional city playhouses like Shakespeare's Globe, from which female performers and writers were excluded. The intimate, medieval venue of the Marlowe Kit will recreate the conditions of a 'private' household performance amidst the commercial bustle of the city. Members of the public of all ages and backgrounds will be invited to contribute actively to the production process by attending free talks, multi-media workshops and open rehearsals leading up to the performances. Those visiting Penshurst and the Marlowe Kit will be able to offer their own perspectives on the script and other Sidney writings by engaging in discussion with the academic leader, the director and the performer-interpreters. The academic leader will talk about the Sidney manuscripts and women's writing from Kent at the Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone. Reading or rehearsing scenes in the rooms and historic gardens at Penshurst will offer actors and members of the public a heightened sensory experience that should prompt reflections about how emotions are generated by places and by the past. Visitors to Penshurst and the Marlowe Kit will be encouraged to respond creatively too, using art, music, creative writing. Through such activities, visitors will become co-producers of the performances of 'Love's Victory' and of Penshurst as a living heritage site. The project contributes to Penshurst's and The Marlowe's long-term goals to build awareness of a shared literary past: deeply rooted in the Kentish landscape but with international scope, whose cultural significance continues to the present. To reach wider publics who are not able to travel to Kent, 'Dramatizing Penshurst' will offer a virtual experience of the co-production process online. A performance of 'Love's Victory' at Penshurst Place will be professionally filmed and made freely available via the project's website. A new on-line exhibition will host edited filmed extracts from the rehearsals, talks, workshops, examples of writing about Penshurst and by the Sidneys and images of the historical sites. People's creative and reflective responses to the live events and Penshurst Place will also feature in the online exhibition. Items will be selected for physical exhibitions at the Marlowe Kit and later at Penshurst Place. The academic advisor will use the archive of materials to offer a Massive Online Open Course to engage a worldwide audience with the writing of Wroth and with Penshurst Place's literary heritage in an accessible way.