ben naylor

Throughout my career, I’ve participated in academic conferences and seminars as a speaker, panel member and workshop leader. These include:

2022: Jewish theatre as an Object of Anthropological Study, Inalco (Institut National des langues et civilisations orientales), Paris: Shylock or Shynot? Dialogic exploration of The Merchant of Venice in a yeshivish format, with Conrad Cohen (RCSSD/RSC).

2022: Il Jornadas de Teatro Clásico de Málaga: William Shakespeare, Málaga: three-day workshop on translating Coriolanus with Paula Rodriguez.

2021: Shakespeare’s Rivals: Rhetoric and Performance Today, University of York. Workshop on texts by Middleton and Jonson with Prof Mike Cordner, director Phillip Breen and actor Ed Bennett.

2019: 21st Century Acting: Race and Inclusive Practice – What Next? Shakespeare’s Globe/Central. Panel on audition process and practice in drama schools.

2018: New Old Spaces: Colloquium on Early Modern Replica Theatres, Rose Theatre Kingston. Talk on Pop-up Globe.

2018: Perdition Catch My Soul: Shakespeare, Hell and Damnation symposium, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Paper on Monstrosity, Acting and the Devilish.

2018: Kingston Shakespeare Seminar: Barton, Hall and Shakespeare Conference, Rose Theatre/Kingston University. Presentation on Peter Hall, Shakespeare and Stanislavsky.

2018: ‘Making New Worlds from Old:’ Out of the Wings conference on translating Hispanic theatre, King’s College London. Panel member and workshop leader, working with RCSSD students, translator William Gregory and movement director Anna Healey on Juan Radrigan’s The Desolate Prince.

2017: The Oxford-Globe Forum for Medicine and Drama in Practice, conference on Altered States, Oxford University/Shakespeare’s Globe. Presentation on Othello’s trance.

2015: Britgrad, the British Graduate Shakespeare conference, Shakespeare Institute. Plenary speaker, workshop presentation on theatrical reading of Hamlet, Act I scene i.

2010: Gesture Lab at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Principal investigator for The Bulwer Project, an in-depth scholarly and practical inquiry into the gestural codifications of John Bulwer’s Chirologia and Chironomia of 1644, with a particular focus on Early Modern stage practice. (See separate project page on the tab above.)

2010: Verse Speaking seminar at RCSSD. Convenor and panel member of a book launch and discussion of contemporary verse speaking practice alongside Shakespeare scholar Dr Abigail Rokison-Woodall and director Stephen Unwin.

2009: British Shakespeare Association conference, Kings College/Shakespeare’s Globe. Conference paper on Shakespeare in the conservatoire. This paper was also an important philosophical step in the redesign of the MA Acting (Classical) course at RCSSD.

2003: International Marlowe Conference, Marlowe Society of America/Cambridge University. Guest speaker on directing Marlowe.