Thinking Spaces: Kim Solga, “Women Making Shakespeare Now: Decolonizing the Creation Room”

Thinking Spaces, “Women Making Shakespeare Now: Decolonizing the Creation Room” is presented by Dr. Kim Solga, and takes place Friday, October 27 at 2pm ET. The talk includes a presentation followed by a guided Q&A and conversation period. 

For our third Thinking Spaces session, we are excited to welcome Dr. Kim Solga. Join us on Friday 27 October 2023, 2:00PM-3:30PM to listen to this critically acclaimed teacher and scholar discuss and share ideas about decolonizing the Shakespeare Industry. This talk takes place in-person in the MacKinnon Building, Room 103, University of Guelph. Registration is required to attend. Sign up now!

More about this talk:

In the wake of BLM, MeToo, the COVID-19 pandemic, and changing audience and creator dynamics, the Shakespeare Industry (arts organizations and academic institutions alike) has finally realized that Shakespeare wasn’t just a basic white guy; “Shakespeare” can be – indeed, *is* – Black, trans, Indigenous, gender queer, disabled. While historians like Sawyer Kemp, Andy Kesson, Ayanna Thompson, and more work to uncover the previously invisible histories of Shakespeare’s own queer and coloured worlds, artists like Emma Frankland, Dawn Jani Birley, Reneltta Arluk, Nataki Garrett, and more are devising creation room practices that not only permit, but *rely upon*, the whole selves of equity-deserving artists previously excluded from Shakespearean spaces to shape the worlds of rehearsal and the plays in performance. I’ve just completed a book called Women Making Shakespeare in the 21st Century (CUP, 2024), for which I interviewed more than a dozen directors, playwrights, actors and scholar-artists about how they approach the hot potato we call “Shakespeare” in ways that are fundamentally disruptive of the colonial norms that historically shaped Shakespearean production and reception. In this talk I’ll share some of the most inspiring of my learnings, and I’ll also talk about the obstacles that still lie in the way of this work and how we, scholars and artists, might address them together.

More about the speaker:

Kim Solga is Professor of Theatre Studies and English Studies at Western University. She is the author of four books, including Violence Against Women in Early Modern Performance (2009) and Theatre & Feminism (2015), and the editor of six more, including the award-winning Performance and the City (2009) and Performance and the Global City (2013), with D.J. Hopkins and Shelley Orr. Kim is also a decorated teacher, and she currently holds the Arts and Humanities Teaching Fellowship (2021-24) at Western’s Centre for Teaching and Learning.