Community Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet with special guest, Jessica Bauman

Community Shakespeare with Marie Roche, Ph.D. UMass and guest scholar, Jessica Bauman, director of Arden Everywhere

What has love got to do with it: Wars & National Conflicts?

This fall’s conversation will not be for the faint of heart, but for the warriors of ideas who will unflinchingly tackle and conquer the profound questions these plays raise. We will endeavor to explore: Romeo and Juliet; Antony and Cleopatra and Troilus and Cressida. We will explore the purpose and representation of love in these plays as the entry point to study how the personal enters the larger stage of British history (Troy and its fall; the Tyrone Rebellion), and of epics and myth (Iliad and Aeneid), and conversely how the external conflicts of titans (Priam and Agamemnon) and nations (Ancient Greece and Roman Empires) enter the realm of the private, causing the lovers’ demise and perhaps, with them, the death of a kind of ideology. How do the lovers’ relationships reveal or exemplify clashes of existential beliefs, of politics, and even the colliding of traditions; epic, historic, and romance?

To register for this workshop, please visit Dr. Marie Roche's  website.