Arden Shakespeare Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

Review Performance and theater-based scholarship of early modern drama is thriving, as [Playing Indoors demonstrates]…Tosh repeatedly demonstrates that by restoring a lost materiality to the stage’s ambient effects―as happens when a production puts into the actors’ hands the theater’s light as well as its putting out―those effects become strong signifying agents in their own right. ― Studies in English Literature 1500-1900With academic rigour, with mischievous wit, and with infectious excitement, Will Tosh records the progress of the creation of this jewel of a new theatre. A book of sharp pleasure. -- DOMINIC DROMGOOLE, Director, Classic Spring & Open Palm FilmsThis is a fascinating cultural history of a new theatre and its reception; it offers a perceptive reading of our contemporary relationship with the "Jacobean" and draws upon a wealth of scholarly research, artists’ experience and audience responses, to explore how architecture, aesthetics, text and practitioner create theatrical meaning. -- BRIDGET ESCOLME, Queen Mary University of London, UKWill Tosh’s exhilarating exploration makes Theatre History anew as the history of a single theatre. This is a superbly engaging scholarly celebration of a remarkable theatre space. -- PETER HOLLAND, University of Notre Dame, USA Product Description What have we discovered about performance practice in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse since the opening of the intimate candlelit theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe? Playing Indoors reveals the results of a two-year study into the performance of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in this unique theatre, drawing together insights into early modern stage practice and the observations of today’s actors and spectators. A history of the experiences of artists and audience members who experienced the space first, the book is also a study of the significance of re-imagined theatres like the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and the Globe. Accessibly written and intended for a wide audience of students, scholars, artists and theatre-goers, Playing Indoors is a valuable contribution to the young field of early modern practice-as-research. About the Author Will Tosh is Lecturer and Research Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe, London. He led the Indoor Performance Practice Project (2014-16), which examined playing in the candle-lit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and coordinates Globe Education’s on-going Research in Action series of public workshops. He is the author of Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare’s England (2016) and Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (2018).