B01

SILVIA BIGLIAZZI, SIDIA FIORATO, CRISTIANO RAGNI, EMANUEL STELZER with GIANPAOLO SAVORELLI. Skenè Series and the Shakespeare Festival at the Roman Theatre (21 July, Museum of Natural History, 11.15-12.30)

This dual-format event brings together scholarly insight and theatrical memory. Silvia Bigliazzi, Director of the Skenè Research Centre at the University of Verona, together with members of the editorial board, will introduce the Centre’s publishing initiatives and invite participants to consider them as venues for their research. These include the open-access, peer-reviewed Skenè. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies (founded in 2014), its supplement book series Skenè. Texts and Studies, an online and print-on-demand collection (Pisa: ETS). The series features annotated editions of dramatic texts and primary sources, as well as original monographs exploring the theory, practice, and history of theatre and drama. The presentation will also showcase the Centre’s digital archives, designed as research tools for scholars and students alike, and a new book series, Cross-Borders (Pisa: ETS), marked by an intermedial focus. The second part of the event will shift from publication to performance history with a special interview with Gianpaolo Savorelli, who served as Artistic Director of the historic Verona Shakespeare Festival from 1974 to 2019. Drawing on more than four decades of artistic leadership, Savorelli will reflect on the Festival’s legacy, its evolving relationship with Shakespeare’s works, and the broader cultural significance of staging Shakespeare in Verona. 

B02 

Screening of Macbettu (22 July, Polo Zanotto T1, 11.15-12.30)

Macbettu, directed by Alessandro Serra for Teatro Persona, is a radical and mesmerising reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, performed in Sardinian and inspired by the archaic rituals, sounds, and landscapes of the island. Acclaimed internationally, the production has won numerous major theatre awards and toured across Europe and beyond, earning praise for its stark visual power, all-male cast, ritualistic physicality, and haunting use of voice, percussion, and silence. Serra’s Macbettu strips the tragedy to its elemental forces – ambition, violence, fate – delivering a visceral, almost anthropological theatrical experience that feels at once ancient and fiercely contemporary. A film of a production of Macbettu will be screened with English and Italian surtitles. For a live interview with the director, see C03.

B03

ROBERT STAGG. New Variorum Shakespeare (23 July, Museum of Natural History, 11.15-12.30)

The New Variorum Shakespeare is a free, open-access digital resource that allows users to see the textual and critical history of Shakespeare’s works, word by word and line by line. They are the oldest continuously operating editorial project in Shakespeare studies, founded in 1871 and with roots in the eighteenth century. At this informational session it will be demonstrated how you can use the NVS and talk about future developments in the Variorum. We will also be launching the NVS’s digital text of King Lear, a major editorial and technological undertaking. There will be time for more informal conversation as well as a chance to meet NVS faculty after the presentations.

B04

PETER HOLLAND, ZACHARY LESSER, TIFFANY STERN, AYANNA THOMPSON, ANDREW HARTLEY. New Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series (24 July, Museum of Natural History, 11.15-12.30)

2026 marks the launch of The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series of Plays, Poems and Sonnets for a new generation of readers and scholars. The first two editions publish in May: Julius Caesar, edited by Andrew James Hartley, and Titus Andronicus, edited by Curtis Perry, and Ayanna Thompson. Join this discussion between the General Editors for the Series, Peter Holland, Zachary Lesser, and Tiffany Stern, alongside Volume Editors, Andrew James Hartley, and Ayanna Thompson, to learn more about this landmark series and the process of editing Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus.

B05

JOSH LUBARR AND REBECCA GOODHEART. Exploring Shakespeare’s Worldview: Seeing the Plays Through Elizabethan Eyes (25 July, Teatro Scientifico-Teatro Laboratorio, 11.15-12.30)

This book salon/workshop explores Shakespeare’s World: Seeing the Plays through Elizabethan Eyes, a new work based on the teachings of Dennis Krausnick, a master teacher of classical acting and a founding member of Shakespeare & Company. This book offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding Shakespeare’s plays by immersing actors, scholars, and educators in the Elizabethan model of reality—the cosmology, physiology, and psychology that shaped the playwright’s language, characters, and themes. By bridging historical scholarship with practical theatrical application, the book serves as both an intellectual framework and a hands-on guide for engaging with Shakespeare’s texts in performance. This session invites scholars, theatre practitioners, and educators to try on some of the worldview’s central ideas to experience how they inform understanding and interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays in ways that enhance performance. 

B06

GREG DORAN AND PAUL EDMONDSON. Walking Shadow. Love, Loss, and Shakespeare (21 July, Juliet’s Tomb, 14.00-15.15)

Greg Doran, who stepped down after a decade as Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 2022, talks about his new book, a compelling blend of memoir, travelogue and investigation, in an interview with Paul Edmondson. After the death of his husband, the celebrated actor Sir Antony Sher, Greg Doran stepped down from his role as artistic director of the RSC. In the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, he set out to see how many of these important volumes he could find. The journey took him to America, to Japan, and to New Zealand and South Africa where the legacy of Shakespeare has become entwined with the story of colonialism. Each copy has its own unique features – often visible only to the eagle-eyed – and remarkable tales. By his journey’s end, Doran had seen more than 200 First Folios – over 90 per cent of all the surviving copies – including one whose existence was previously unknown. He had also gained a greater understanding of Shakespeare and his times, as well as his impact on the world.

B07

MICHELE MARRAPODI. Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies (Routledge) and Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies Reprints (ETS: Pisa) (22 July, Juliet’s Tomb, 14.00-15.15)

These two book series on Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies are conceived to encompass a wide spectrum of research work on early modern culture and are jointly presented in order to both complement and supplement each other. The first series, which has published 31 books to date, places early modern English drama within the context of the European Renaissance and, more specifically, within the context of Italian cultural, dramatic, and literary traditions, with reference to the impact and influence of both classical and contemporary culture. Among the various forms of influence, the series considers early modern Italian novellas, theatre, and discourses as direct or indirect sources, analogues and paralogues for the construction of Shakespeare’s drama, particularly in the comedies, romances, and other Italianate plays. Critical analysis focusing on other cultural transactions, such as travel and courtesy books, the arts, fencing, dancing, and fashion, will also be encompassed within the scope of the series. Special attention is paid to the manner in which early modern English dramatists adapted Italian materials to suit their theatrical agendas, creating new forms, and stretching the Renaissance practice of contaminatio to achieve, even if unconsciously, a process of rewriting, remaking and refashioning of ‘alien’ cultures. The series welcomes both single-author studies and collections of essays, and invites proposals that take into account the transition of cultures between the two countries as a bilateral process, paying attention also to the penetration of early modern English culture into the Italian world.

The second book series has published three books to date and aims to gather in a single volume a selection of prominent Renaissance scholars’ productions, collectively unavailable on the market, but fundamental to the study of Anglo-Italian literary relations. The scope and temporal boundaries of AIRSR range from the Humanist engagement with the Classical legacy to the late seventeenth century, investing all genres of the Anglo-Italian Renaissance. The objective of this new series is twofold: to reprint selections of related individual essays in single volumes, and to reach out to a broad readership of both junior and senior researchers interested in Comparative Literature and Early Modern Studies by offering open-access collections of seminal critical writings by leading international scholars.

B08

MARK THORNTON BURNETT AND MARK DUDGEON. Arden Shakespeare and Adaptation Series (23 July, Juliet’s Tomb, 14.00-15.15)

A celebration of Arden’s Shakespeare and Adaptation book series, edited by Mark Thornton Burnett (Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, UK) to which all delegates are invited. Meet the series editor, Mark Thornton Burnett, and publisher, Mark Dudgeon. Since its launch in February 2022, Arden’s Shakespeare and Adaptation series has quickly established itself as the go-to series for authors, editors and readers invested in this dynamic field. Earlier this year saw the publication of the 15^th book in the series, which includes both sole authored books as well as edited collections. The series addresses the phenomenon of Shakespeare and adaptation in all of its guises and explores how Shakespeare continues as a reference-point in a generically diverse body of representations and forms, including fiction, film, drama, theatre, performance and mass media. The launch event will celebrate some of the recent publications and hear from some of its authors.

B09

VANESSA I. CORREDERA, DAVID MCINNIS, ARTHUR L. LITTLE. Meet the Editors: Publishing with Shakespeare Quarterly (24 July, Juliet’s Tomb, 14.00-15.15)

Join the editors of Shakespeare Quarterly for informal conversation about submitting work for publication, including what to submit and what to expect after you’ve submitted it. All are welcome, and early career scholars are particularly encouraged to attend.

B10

PETER BOTTAZZI, MICHAEL DOBSON, FRANCESCO LONGOBARDI, PIETRO COPANI, SILVIA RIGON. Shakespeare: The Stuff of Dreams. An Installation Journey Through Power, Magic, and the Human Voice (21 July, Juliet’s Tomb, 15.45-17.00)

This presentation introduces a large-scale, site-specific project dedicated to Shakespeare, to be hosted at Carlo V Castle in Lecce, Puglia, from May to December 2026. Conceived as a dialogue between visual arts, performance, and scholarship, the installation explores four thematic dimensions: conspiracy, magic, monologues, and Prospero’s voyage. Combining dramaturgical research and artistic practice, the project invites audiences to experience Shakespeare’s texts through sound, image, and space. The presentation will outline the creative and conceptual process behind the installations and reflect on how interdisciplinary collaboration can renew our encounter with Shakespeare’s works and their global legacy.

Discussions about site-specific performances and evocations of Shakespeare have usually concentrated on sites which promise an ‘authentic’ encounter with Shakespearean places or structures – whether in Stratford, at Elsinore, at the replica Globe on Bankside, or at other attempted reconstructions of Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouses elsewhere.  This presentation will juxtapose this emphasis against the fluid and even careless attitude to place visible in Shakespeare’s plays themselves, before turning to consider two recent projects which invoke Shakespeare in broadly Gothic ways to confer new meanings on places previously unconnected with his life or work. One is an enhanced-reality exercise by which various corners of a park in Singapore can now be haunted on demand by spectral representations of Shakespearean characters. The other is a much grander immersive edutainment project, the work of Silvia Rigon and Pierluigi Bottazzi, by which a castle in Liguria has become a living immersive model of Shakespearean consciousness.

Participants (in alphabetical order):

Peter Bottazzi – Visual artist and set designer, co-designer of the installation project;
Michael Dobson – Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham;
Francesco Longobardi / Pietro Copani – Direzione Generale Musei Nazionali Puglia;
Silvia Rigon – Artist and dramaturg, co-designer of the installation project.

B11

DAVID SWARTZ. Nothing From Nothing (a Film Adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear) (22 July, Juliet’s Tomb, 15.45-17.00)

A screening of David Swartz’s Nothing from Nothing (Lisbon, 2025). With the intention to explore the aesthetic value of nothing, its miraculous ability and power to create itself out of itself and to inspire autonomous creativity in others, the film reveals how nothing’s self-creating potential, referred to as Shakespeare’s Tenth Muse or Will to Nothing, turns loss to find, death to life, and none to many. “Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?” (King Lear 1.4). Alongside Lear’s Fool, the audience of this film is invited to ask: ‘what is the use value of nothing?’

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/1114551415/1e80040c2e

B12 

MELINDA GOUGH AND ERIN KELLY. Early Theatre: a Roundtable (23 July, Juliet’s Tomb, 15.45-17.00)

This roundtable introduces work behind the scenes at the journal Early Theatre. The journal’s editors, along with invited contributors and advisory board members, will discuss editorial practices, peer-review processes, our unique “Issues in Review” section, and efforts towards greater accessibility and equity. We will also speak to audience cultivation, scholarly reception, and tips for getting published.

B13

MARISTELLA GATTO, BEATRICE RIGHETTI, ROBERTA ZANONI. SENSIBLE GAMES. SHAKESPEARE’S NARRATIVE SOURCES AND GAMIFICATION (24 July, Juliet’s Tomb, 15.45-17.00)

This session examines the potential interactions between pedagogical gamification and Shakespearean source studies, focusing on the experimental framework developed within the SENS – Shakespeare’s Narrative Sources project. Whether through transcription games, puzzle games based on the reconstruction or rewriting of a text’s narrative flow, and even through philologically-oriented narrative investigations and detective stories, games constitute a meaningful component of the SENS platform’s mission to enhance the accessibility and understanding of Shakespeare’s source studies. Against this background, the example of WikiSENS—a collaborative transcription game specifically designed within the Wikimedia ecosystem— is a case in point to illustrate the role that gamified and crowdsourced transcription environments can play in transforming scholarly engagement with early modern narrative sources into an active, collaborative learning practice, reconfiguring the student from passive recipient to active participant and co-producer of textual outputs. The case study centred on transcriptions from Ecatommiti, the narrative source of Othello, demonstrates how such practices foster renewed attention to the material and linguistic dimensions of textual transmission, while simultaneously redefining the boundaries between research, teaching, and public humanities. Other examples will be illustrated by Beatrice Righetti and Roberta Zanoni of the Skenè Research Centre, assisted by students Giulia Canteri and Marco Tommasi.

B14

MARCELA KOSTIHOVA. Shakespeare After Democracy? Shakespeare in the Age of New Authoritarianism (24 July, Polo Zanotto T1, 11.15-12.30)

Shakespeare after Democracy? is a new Special Issue of the journal Humanities that examines Shakespeare in the present moment of democratic backsliding and the global rise of new authoritarianisms. While Shakespeare scholarship has long explored the playwright’s reception under twentieth-century authoritarian regimes—fascism, communism, colonial rule—this project shifts the focus decisively to the present tense. Across national contexts, political power is increasingly consolidated through technologically sophisticated means: surveillance infrastructures, algorithmic governance, disinformation, lawfare, and the performative orchestration of popular consent. This session introduces the conceptual framework of the Special Issue and invites conversation about how Shakespeare is being mobilized, contested, censored, or reimagined under these conditions. Drawing on examples from contemporary theatre, film and television, pedagogy, digital media, and public discourse, the presentation asks how Shakespeare’s plays—so deeply invested in authority, legitimacy, rhetoric, crowd behavior, and political affect—function as both cultural instruments and diagnostic tools in an age of new authoritarian power. The session will conclude with discussion and an open invitation for scholars working across global, comparative, and media contexts to contribute to the Special Issue.

C03

ALESSANDRO SERRA, ROSY COLOMBO AND EMANUEL STELZER. Alessandro Serra’s Shakespeares (23 July, Polo Zanotto T1, 11.15-12.30)

An interview with the Italian director Alessandro Serra on his engagement with Shakespeare, especially Macbeth and The Tempest.