Sarah McCourt

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College: College of Humanities
Discipline: Drama
Department: Drama

I am a PhD researcher exploring the process of adapting Shakespeare for performance by small touring companies in England.

My research project developed from a long standing interest in ways of interpreting and adapting Shakespeare and his contemporaries.  As an undergraduate this interest was combined with Performance Art and Film, culminating in a dissertation examining Derek Jarman’s adaptation of Marlowe’s Edward II.  Whilst working as a Youth Theatre Director, Drama Lecturer and Theatre Maker I have experimented with Shakespeare in various forms using editing, improvisation and double casting to manipulate the texts.  This work fed into a collage performance for the final module of my MFA in Staging Shakespeare in which I intertwined two storylines: one written by myself and one created from edited sections from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. 

 

I work as a freelance actor, and am also Artistic Director of  Restless Theatre Company which combines adaptation of classic plays with new writing and devising to explore ways to create theatre that is relevant for how we live today.  Productions include: Othello's Dream (City Gate Hotel, February 2008), Human Alchemy (Hildesheim, June 2008 and People's Theatre Camden, February 2009), Monstrous Love (People's Theatre Camden, May 2009 and Exeter Phoenix, December 2009), Merchant of Venice (Exeter Bikeshed Theatre, May 2012) and Point Blank (Riviera FM, June 2012).