IU School of Liberal Arts

• Features
• Student Spotlight
• Featured Faculty & Staff
• Amazing Alumni & Donors
• Featured Center
• Making an Impact

Featured Center

The New Oxford Shakespeare Project

The New Oxford Shakespeare Project, a research project commissioned by Oxford University Press, centers new analysis of William Shakespeare's plays in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. Building on previous studies and examining performances of the plays, the New Oxford Shakespeare Project is creating a Shakespeare edition in multiple media formats for the twenty-first century.

An international group of scholars have come together to spearhead the work on this new edition of Shakespeare's poems and plays, led by IUPUI's Dr. Terri Bourus, (Associate Professor of English Drama), Gary Taylor (Professor of English, Florida State University), and John Jowett (Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Deputy Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham), the project's General Editors. Eleanor Lowe (Field Chair/Lecturer in Drama, Oxford Brookes University) is a co-editor and Dr. Francis X. Connor (Editing Research Associate, IUPUI) and Dr. Sarah Neville (Editing Research Associate, IUPUI) are the on-site IUPUI editors. Together with the assistance of graduate research assistants, they are examining every element of Shakespeare's known texts, considering the most recent scholarship and bolstering it with even newer ideas as the project progresses. Every detail of each text will be evaluated alongside a comprehensive re-examination of the entire canon. By combining micro-analysis with macro-analysis, the New Oxford Shakespeare Project enhances readers' and actors' understanding of what Shakespeare wrote and what it means.

Because Shakespeare wrote for theatrical performance, performing the plays is indispensable to editorial research. To augment editorial analysis, Hoosier Bard Productions was founded--primarily to act as the theatrical arm of the project. In 2011 the production company staged a performance of Young Hamlet, based on the very first printed text of Hamlet, believed by many scholars to be Shakespeare's earliest version of the play. This radical production allowed the New Oxford Shakespeare Project to test new ideas about how this, one of the oldest of the early modern play texts, might be better understood.

This spring Hoosier Bard and the New Oxford Shakespeare will stage The History of Cardenio, a 'lost' play written by Shakespeare and his younger contemporary John Fletcher. The play survives only in fragments, which have been identified and put back together by Gary Taylor. It took him more than twenty years to research and rebuild the play. Along the way he had assistance from actors (who make the text come alive) including Richard Dreyfuss, Whoopi Goldberg, and the actors at Shakespeare's New Globe Theater in London. The upcoming debut performance is directed by Bourus and will feature a mixed cast of Indianapolis professional and IU-system student actors and will open the long-awaited new IUPUI Campus Center Theatre.

In a world of diverse technology, the New Oxford Shakespeare Project will produce work in multiple volumes, formats, and media—interlinked and designed to meet the high scholarly and aesthetic standards the world expects from the Oxford University Press. The project also embraces the challenge of providing students an authoritative, dependable voice on the Internet.

The New Oxford Shakespeare Project is located in the Emilie Building alongside the Kurt Vonnegut Library. The project anticipates its multimedia edition of Shakespeare's work will be completed in 2016. More information about the New Oxford Shakespeare Project, its editors, and Hoosier Bard Productions can be found at http://liberalarts.iupui.edu/shakespeare/.

Our Features