Kirk Davis Jr. Annual Public Shakespeare Lecture | 2026
A Wildland-Urban Interface Climate Action Network event
Hamlet tells us that the purpose of playing is to hold "a mirror up to Nature.” In Shakespeare’s Elsinore, violets, pansies, daisies, and columbines nestle amidst rosemary and rue. An ancient weeping willow grows aslant a brook. Yet Ophelia’s ecological affinity is often overlooked, and both her life and the chance to share her knowledge of plant medicine are tragically cut short. What if Ophelia's herbs and flowers were given a central place on stage, to share a worldview of regeneration and renewal? What if Ophelia’s seeded potential were to be cultivated, enhanced, and empowered in our shared era of ecological crisis?
In this World Premiere performance, actor Amanda Vialva revives Ophelia’s journey, to evolve Shakespeare’s story beyond the binary of Hamlet’s existential question (you know the one) and look at how we may adapt as part of nature, and better learn to inter-be…
BIOphelia grew out of a practice-based research project at Cornell University, where Jessica Rosenberg (Literatures in English) and Theo Black (Performing and Media Arts) have expanded their work in the environmental humanities and performance studies through cross-pollinations with Cornell’s Botanic Gardens and the departments of Plant and Soil Science, Ethnobotany, Environment and Sustainability, and Biological and Environmental Engineering. They also worked with community-based herbalists to cultivate their hybridized approach to Hamlet. After its West Coast premiere, this show will be featured at the Shakespeare Association of America and the World Shakespeare Congress.
At this event, experience the beauty and power of BIOphelia and participate in a talk-back with the show’s creators. Herb-infused tea and baked goods inspired by Ophelia’s kitchen-garden will be served. Free and open to all. RSVP information forthcoming.
Amanda Vialva is a New York-based actor, dancer, and singer. She is thrilled to explore Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, evolving her role in ecological renewal during the BIOphelia journey. Her most recent Shakespeare performance as Olivia from Twelfth Night was done in American Sign Language at the Shakespeare Association of America conference in Boston last spring, extending her work in Adam Shulman’s adaptation from their prior collaboration. Amanda has performed in numerous theatrical productions and film festivals, including Young Woman in Machinal, David Attenborough in Time Flies, Woman with Furs in Marisol, among others. As a performer, Amanda’s day job is with The Walt Disney Corporation and she enjoys enhancing her craft with leading NYC hip-hop choreographers.
Theo Black is a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University, teaching in Performing & Media Arts and Environment & Sustainability. Recent adaptation/directing projects include: BIOphelia, Shakespearean Ecologies, Once Upon a Time in the Anthropocene, HumaNatures, and Eco-Macbeth: Nature Fights Back. As an actor he has performed with The California Shakespeare Theatre, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, African-American Shakespeare Company, Central Works, and many others. His research interests include performance and ecology, scholar-practitioner Shakespeare and the collaborative devising of new work engaging salient issues of the world today. Theo also serves as a mentor for Footprints, a climate action & environmental justice camp.
Adam Washiyama Shulman is a multidisciplinary ecological artist and theatrical designer. As an enactor of Shakespeare for environmental and social justice, his credits include Katie Brokaw’s A Midsummer Yosemite's Dream in Yosemite National Park (eco-scenographer and actor), Theo Black’s BIOphelia at Cornell University (eco-scenographer), Randall Martin’s Cymbeline in the Anthropocene project (actor and editor), Beth Milles’ Desdemona by Toni Morrison (projections), and a stage/film Twelfth Night engagement in American Sign Language (adaptor/director) through the Student Laboratory Theatre Company, inspired by Peter Novak. Adam’s work will be featured in the Globe4Globe Shakespeare and Climate Justice Symposium. He also serves a guest instructor at Cornell University, in courses on land and art and eco-performance. Adam graduated Cornell with a BFA & BA summa cum laude.
Jessica Rosenberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University, with a particular focus on the literature and culture of early modern England. Her research and teaching explore how people of the past made sense of their natural environments and how they sustained, shared, and grappled with that sometimes troubling knowledge. She has also been a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at USC, a long-term fellow at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA, and the Mercator Fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and she is the author of Botanical Poetics: Early Modern Plant Books and the Husbandry of Print (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), as well as articles on husbandry, hospitality, poetry and plants, and the aesthetic and scientific dimensions of everyday life.
Jenn Carhuamaca, a program coordinator for the Wildland-Urban Interface Climate Action Network for the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, will share her work developing zines about native plants and climate awareness.
This event was made possible by the generosity of Kirk Davis Jr. It is cosponsored by the Wildland-Urban Interface Climate Action Network (WUICAN), a consortium of community-based organizations, California Native American Tribes, land managers, and universities working to address the climate crisis in Southern California.