Our Neighbor Shakespeare

Abstract:In an introduction to this special issue, we call for scholarly attention to Shakespeare's local habitations, arguing for the potential of regional Shakespeares to expand our field. We situate the study of regional Shakespeares in the continental United States among several related scholarly discourses: critical regionalism, global Shakespeare, adaptation studies, the "amateur turn" in performance studies, and interest in the methodologies of community-based theater. We chart the emergence of scholarship calling for a more localized, grassroots encounter with Shakespeare and introduce the scholarly, pedagogical, and political possibilities that this work makes available. We explore the limitations and possibilities of various definitions of regionality and identify five central investments shared by regional productions: material contact, interpersonal connections, the internal diversity of regions, connection to global and national concerns, and the ways Shakespeare and the region shape each other. Studying regional Shakespeare has an ethical dimension as it requires us to invest in our own local communities, enabling political and interpersonal care. This act of care is not tangential to the intellectual task of understanding Shakespeare's participation in a region, but central to it. Scholars of regional Shakespeare partner with practitioners and companies in the creative work of a community's self-becoming. Regional Shakespeare challenges the implicit assumption that Shakespeare is an outside observer who comments on a region. Instead, in the hands of regional artists and audiences, Shakespeare both is rendered local, and aids in rendering the local.