Shakespeare Bulletin Theatre Review Guidelines

The critic could be retrained as a data collector, confined to

the production of objective statements, and encouraged to
redeem himself in a society for which [] he has served as a
morally disruptive, and aesthetically destructive, influence.
Glenn Gould, The Glenn Gould Reader
The first thing any critic ought to make clear is his capacity for
boredom. [] The extreme, total pleasure a critic gets out of a
work of art is so elating that, in its absence, he resembles
nothing so much as an addict who has lost his hypodermic.
Kenneth Tynan, first review in The Daily Sketch, 1951
Every piece of criticism I ever wrote grew out of [] a
desperate tussle to follow the vagaries of my own style in
order to understand fully the intricacies of my own reaction.
Charles Marowitz, Confessions of a Counterfeit Critic
Data-collector, prophet, pedant, enthusiast, addict, recording angel:
the theatre critic is many things to many readers. The editors of
Shakespeare Bulletins reviews section invite its reviewers to explore
these multivalent critical possibilities and personae. We aim to
create a rich archive relating to Shakespearean performance on the
contemporary stage: an archive that captures and analyzes
performances of Shakespeare and his contemporaries that will be of
interest to present and future readers. Reviews of such
performances have some obligation to offer an account that helps
the reader clearly to understand the major conceptual, design,
casting and acting choices made in the performance. But we also
hope that your contributions to the journal will also provide a lasting
record of the all-too-transitory passions theatre can incite. The
lingering traces of elation or boredom, joy or disgust may prove just
as valuable to present and indeed future readers striving to imagine
a bygone production as any detail of costume, set, intonation or
gesture.
In the tradition of our predecessor, Jeremy Lopez, we therefore
welcome many types of review. A key objective of the Bulletin
review pages remains to encourage Shakespeareans to experiment
with new ways of writing about performance. There is nothing
intrinsically wrong with the conventions of academic reviewing as
practiced over the last five decades, but nor is there any compelling
reason why we should limit ourselves to these conventions in the
future. There should be as many ways of writing about
Shakespearean performance as there are performances, with room
for the formal and for the impressionistic, for the quasi-objective

and the subjective, for the fully dressed and the slightly disheveled.
One production might inspire a coherent and exhaustive review;
another might prompt the critic to adopt a colloquial or fragmentary
register. If most of the production strikes the reviewer as bland, but
one moment stands out for its interest, brilliance or instructive
mediocrity, they should feel free to dwell on that moment. What a
theatre review is and what it does is open for discussion. We
welcome reviewers proposals and creativity as they approach and
experience early modern dramas wide-ranging appearances in
contemporary theatrical practice.
Roberta Barker and Paul Prescott, April 2013
When submitting your review, please format it according to
the following template:
Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad
Presented by the Iraqi Theatre Company at Riverside Studios,
London, in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company. June
27-30, 2012. Adapted and directed by Monadhil Daood. Set and
lighting by Jabbar Jodi Allabodi. Costumes by Fadel Qazzaz. Music
composed and directed by Ali Khassaf. With Sami Abdulhameed
(Teacher), Ahmed Salah Moneka (Romeo), Sarwa Rasool (Juliet),
Fikrat Salim (Mercutio), Maimoon Abdalhamza (Montague), Haider
Monathir (Capulet), Allawi Hussein (Paris), Ameer Hussein
(Benvolio), and others.
KATHERINE STEELE BROKAW, University of California, Merced
The night should be for lovers, lamented the Father Lawrence-like
Teacher as the plays opening soundssirens, bombs, machine guns
still rang in the audiences ears. So began Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad,
an Arabic adaptation only loosely based on Shakespeares play. The RSC
commissioned the Iraqi Theater Company to write and perform this work
as part of the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival, and in the weeks before
the Olympics the company traveled from Baghdad to Stratford-upon-Avon
to London. Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad was their first play since the
official end of combat in Iraq, and scars of war as well as fresh wounds
from continued violence formed the context for both artists and
characters. As director and adapter Monadhil Daoods program notes
explained, I am the legitimate son of tragedyUnderstand that we live in
a place where terrorists break our home over our heads.

Additional stylistic notes:

Use the American style for spelling, periods, and commas

throughout the review. (UK authors: switching your
spellchecker to US spelling will automatically alert you to US
spelling conventions).

we prefer Welles's (not Welles')

words with multi and post should be spelled as one word (e.g.
multicultural, postmodern)

act one (not Act I)

5.1.163-64 (to indicate act, scene, lines)

(20) to indicate page citation

Spell out numbers up to 100, e.g. twenty-six (not 26).

Numbers above 100 should be put in Arabic numbers.

If in doubt, please consult the MLA Handbook for Writers of

Research Papers (7th edition, 2009) and/or use a recent issue of
Shakespeare Bulletin as your model.