Institutional Diversity: Representing Disability in the Contemporary Shakespeare Industry

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My project seeks to interrogate the place of disabled characters, actors and audiences within the contemporary Shakespeare theatre industry.Recently, the UK theatre industry has been criticised for its lack of diversity: onstage and within creative and administrative spheres. Responding to movements like #MeToo, #GiveArtistsAChance and #TheatresPullUpOrShutUp, institutions have worked to increase representation of communities marginalized by race, gender, sexuality, and disability, on and off-stage.However, Shakespeare performance scholarship has raised concerns about the strategies of the Shakespeare industry to improve diversity. Julian and Solga (2021) and Williams (2019) point to the harm that 'performative' diversity can cause to implicated communities. Williams's model of 'incomplete dramaturgy' offers tools for exploring how productions hailed as 'progressive' often fail to anticipate the implications of their choices, resulting in reinforcing harmful views. Most recent work on institutional diversity and contemporary Shakespeare performance (e.g. Jarrett-Macauley 2017, Power 2016, Rogers 2013, Thompson 2011) focuses on race, gender and sexuality. To date, there is no sustained study on disability in the contemporary Shakespeare industry that considers its place in all facets of performance. This thesis will fill this gap by interrogating the place of disability in a climate concerned with institutional diversity (as defined by Sara Ahmed) by asking:- What is being done to represent Shakespeare's disabled characters onstage, who is playing them, and what are the ramifications?- What strategies are being deployed to integrate disabled actors into Shakespearean performance? What are the implications?- What strategies are used to present Shakespeare to disabled audiences? What is their purpose, and what are their implications?- What strategies are implemented within the Shakespeare industry to include disabled people within its institutional diversity? What are the ramifications?Scholarly interrogation of the trend of performative diversity in mainstream Shakespeare performance is needed. If productions stop at the 'first hurdle' (Williams, 2019) of representation rather than integrating further institutional change, they can cause harm to marginalised groups. By contributing an in-depth analysis of the strategies used to include disabled actors and audiences within this movement towardsbetter representation within the industry, I hope to bring critical attention to where they succeed and fall short and continue pushing for institutional change. Provisional timeline:First year: Survey literature and identify productions for analysis from the twenty-first century. Using in person analysis, archival videos and reviews, examine the semiotics of disabled bodies on the Shakespearean stage - both characters (eg Richard III, Othello) and disabled actors- and productions targeted at disabled audiences (eg Flute Theatre).Second year: Continue building a database of analysis and critical work, drawing on methods such as those outlined in Jill Bradbury's 'Deafness in Shakespeare Performance' (2022). Identify and interview practitioners within the industry about their experience of producing work and of both on- and off-stage representation.Third year: Write my thesis, integrating my original findings with rigorous research on the representation of disability and of institutional diversity in culture more generally, developing frameworks for evaluating the efficacy of 'diversity work' in relation to Shakespearean performance and disability.