Entertaining the Idea: Core Program at Clark Library, Los Angeles, 2016-17, on Shakespeare, Philosophy, and Performance
Organizers: Julia Lupton (UCI), Lowell Gallagher (UCLA), and James Kearney (UCSB)
October 7-8, 2016; Key Words
January 20-21, 2017: Cut Him Out in Little Stars: Romeo and Juliet in Diaspora
April 28-29, 2017: First Philosophy, Last Judgments: The Lear Real
Program description
To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme:
What, was I married to her in my dream?
Or sleep I now and think I hear all this?
What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?
Until I know this sure uncertainty,
I'll entertain the offer'd fallacy.
Comedy of Errors
To entertain is to delight and amuse (Hamlet wants no “lenten entertainment”), but also to receive guests and hence to court risk, from the real dangers of rape, murder or jealousy (Lucrece, Macbeth, The Winter's Tale) to the more intangible exhilaration of self-disclosure and captivation in response to another (Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night). To entertain an idea is to welcome a compelling thought or beckoning fiction into the disinhibited zone of speculative play. “I'll entertain the offer'd fallacy,” says Antipholus of Syracuse as he abandons himself to the comedy of errors. Like Antipholus, readers of fictions and viewers of plays entertain “themes” and “dreams” on their way to recognition and new knowledge, as a mode of testing the significance and reach of the thought-things they encounter in a world co-created by their imaginative participation.
For four centuries Shakespeare's plays have invited directors, actors, audiences, and readers to entertain a startling range of ideas — about love and freedom in Romeo and Juliet, about social arrangements and states of nature in King Lear, or about judgment and forgiveness in The Winter's Tale. The 2016-17 Clark Core Program, “Entertaining the Idea,” will stage a series of encounters between performance and philosophy in Shakespearean drama, encounters designed both to illumine the plays in their poetic and theatrical amplitude and to explore what philosophy and performance might offer each other in twenty-first century literary studies. We aim to take up drama's capacity to enhance experience, exercise judgment, test existential limits, and assert common bonds. Written during the eventful reshuffling of sacred realities and the launching of political and economic forms that are with us still, Shakespearean drama is intimately concerned with what it means to act, speak, live, and listen in a world whose points of orientation must be continually reestablished.
Key words in this enterprise include entertainment, acting, acknowledgement, hospitality, and ways of life, concepts explored in the opening symposium (Fall, 2016). The second session (Winter, 2017) addresses the international and trans-medial migrations of Romeo and Juliet, with an eye to the philosophical repercussions wrought by translation, adaptation, and media transfer. The final session (Spring, 2017) queries the limits of performance in an exploration of King Lear on stage and off. Over the course of the year, philosophy's commitment to the formation and transformation of persons through spiritual exercise finds its neighbor in drama's arts of action, audition, and the conduct of living. To what extent, we ask, do Shakespeare's plays train their many audiences to entertain ideas: to access drama as a means of tending and attending to self, others, and world in evolving stances of care and repair as well as inquiry and exegesis?
Organizers: Julia Lupton (UCI), Lowell Gallagher (UCLA), and James Kearney (UCSB)
October 7-8, 2016; Key Words
January 20-21, 2017: Cut Him Out in Little Stars: Romeo and Juliet in Diaspora
April 28-29, 2017: First Philosophy, Last Judgments: The Lear Real
Program description
To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme:
What, was I married to her in my dream?
Or sleep I now and think I hear all this?
What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?
Until I know this sure uncertainty,
I'll entertain the offer'd fallacy.
Comedy of Errors
To entertain is to delight and amuse (Hamlet wants no “lenten entertainment”), but also to receive guests and hence to court risk, from the real dangers of rape, murder or jealousy (Lucrece, Macbeth, The Winter's Tale) to the more intangible exhilaration of self-disclosure and captivation in response to another (Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night). To entertain an idea is to welcome a compelling thought or beckoning fiction into the disinhibited zone of speculative play. “I'll entertain the offer'd fallacy,” says Antipholus of Syracuse as he abandons himself to the comedy of errors. Like Antipholus, readers of fictions and viewers of plays entertain “themes” and “dreams” on their way to recognition and new knowledge, as a mode of testing the significance and reach of the thought-things they encounter in a world co-created by their imaginative participation.
For four centuries Shakespeare's plays have invited directors, actors, audiences, and readers to entertain a startling range of ideas — about love and freedom in Romeo and Juliet, about social arrangements and states of nature in King Lear, or about judgment and forgiveness in The Winter's Tale. The 2016-17 Clark Core Program, “Entertaining the Idea,” will stage a series of encounters between performance and philosophy in Shakespearean drama, encounters designed both to illumine the plays in their poetic and theatrical amplitude and to explore what philosophy and performance might offer each other in twenty-first century literary studies. We aim to take up drama's capacity to enhance experience, exercise judgment, test existential limits, and assert common bonds. Written during the eventful reshuffling of sacred realities and the launching of political and economic forms that are with us still, Shakespearean drama is intimately concerned with what it means to act, speak, live, and listen in a world whose points of orientation must be continually reestablished.
Key words in this enterprise include entertainment, acting, acknowledgement, hospitality, and ways of life, concepts explored in the opening symposium (Fall, 2016). The second session (Winter, 2017) addresses the international and trans-medial migrations of Romeo and Juliet, with an eye to the philosophical repercussions wrought by translation, adaptation, and media transfer. The final session (Spring, 2017) queries the limits of performance in an exploration of King Lear on stage and off. Over the course of the year, philosophy's commitment to the formation and transformation of persons through spiritual exercise finds its neighbor in drama's arts of action, audition, and the conduct of living. To what extent, we ask, do Shakespeare's plays train their many audiences to entertain ideas: to access drama as a means of tending and attending to self, others, and world in evolving stances of care and repair as well as inquiry and exegesis?