Pitt-Bradford Professor Co-Edits New Book on Shakespearean Actors

A University of Pittsburgh at Bradford theater professor is the associate editor of a new book on modern Shakespearean actors.

Dr. Kevin Ewert, associate professor of theater, edited the “The Routledge Companion to Actors’ Shakespeare” with John Russell Brown, former associate director of the Royal National Theatre in London and the editor of the “Oxford Illustrated History of Theater.”

“Brown is one of the most important and influential scholars in the field of Shakespeare performance,” Ewert said.

Initially, Brown asked Ewert to write a chapter about Colm Feore, a Canadian actor who made his name at the Stratford Festival of Canada, near Ewert’s boyhood home.

Later, Brown asked Ewert to join him as associate editor for the volume.

Ewert said the volume focuses on living actors from England, Europe and North America “at the top of their games.” Each chapter gives insight into the actors’ approach to the material and characters they perform. In most cases, the contributing writers – some of whom are actors and directors themselves -- knew the actors and their careers quite well, had access to rehearsals, were well-versed in the type of training a particular actor had, and conducted lengthy personal interviews for the book.

“Each of the contributors had to have intimate knowledge of their subjects,” said Ewert, who helped with the overall organization of the book, and worked with all of the 19 other authors on their essays.

“With its focus on process over time rather than on a single production or well-reviewed performance, and with such a variety of approaches to acting Shakespeare on display, this book is really a significant addition to the field,” Ewert said.

“It’s also just a great read for anyone interested in Shakespeare or in what exactly it is that actors do with him.”

The actors range from strictly realistic Russians clowns in the Italian style to avant garde New Yorkers and include Dame Judi Dench, Kevin Kline and Sir Ian McKellen.

The book is available on Amazon.com.

In addition, Ewert had an article, “The Thrust Stage is not Some Direct Link to Shakespeare,” appears in the summer issue of Shakespeare Bulletin, a peer-reviewed journal from Johns Hopkins University Press.

The article is based on a presentation Ewert did last year at the International Shakespeare Conference at Stratford-upon-Avon. It looks at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s claims that its new flagship theater with its state-of-the-art thrust stage is the “best” and “right” place for staging Shakespeare.

“In that understandable enthusiasm are a lot of unexamined, even dubious, assumptions about theater architecture as destiny,” Ewert said. “This paper looks at practical issues of theater-making in terms of what else will be at work in that new room: actors, directors, designers, audiences and Shakespeare’s texts.”

Ewert earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in Shakespeare studies from the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and a bachelor’s degree in English from Trinity College at the University of Toronto. At Pitt-Bradford, he teaches Introduction to Theatre, Play Analysis, Movement and Stage Combat, Basic and Advanced Acting, and Shakespearean Performances. Additionally, he directs the student production each semester.

In addition to his work on “The Routledge Companion to Actors’ Shakespeare,” he contributed a piece to “The Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare” and is one of the series editors for Palgrave’s The Shakespeare Handbooks and wrote the volume on “Henry V” for that series.