Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies
- Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies
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- Public Engagement 1
Public Engagement
Tales of Fashionable Life, a production based on Maria Edgeworth's The Absentee
Former CECS and English PhD student, Adam Perchard, brought his unique production to York in June 2018, as part of the conference The Worlds of Maria Edgeworth: Networks, Influence and Reception
Sponsored by the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, WRoCAH and York Mansion House.
One Regency novel. Three 21st-century lives.
1812. An Irish noblewoman loses herself in the glittering whirl of fashionable London. To save her, and find himself, her son must go back to the old country.
2018. A trans woman, a cis gay man, and a Muslim drag queen stand proudly on a stage. But how did they get here?
Sometimes the only way forward
Is back.
Pop, opera, comedy, history, tragedy, and multiple bonnets collide in this queer cabaret retelling of Maria Edgeworth’s The Absentee, starring and inspired by the lives of three of London’s most dynamic cabaret artists. As Le Strange, Mzz Kimberley, and The Nightbus take on the multiple characters of the novel, their own twenty-first century stories of social struggle and metamorphosis unfold.
Sponsored by the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, WRoCAH and York Mansion House as part of the celebrations to mark the 250th anniversary of Edgeworth’s birth, Adam Perchard’s debut solo-author play prances across the centuries to ask questions about prejudice & Pride, about race, gender, & queer identity, and about how many Madonna songs you can fit into a period drama.
Filmmaking for the Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond
Film-maker and CECS PhD student Declan McCormack produced a promotional video for the Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond, North Yorkshire. Declan developed a close relationship with the theatre during the course of his PhD research into late eighteenth-century Northern theatre circuits, and in 2017 the theatre commissioned Declan to produce an introductory film for visitors to 'The Georgian Theatre Experience’. This features local volunteers as well as professional actors and provides background information about the Butler company which built the theatre, part of a transpennine circuit that stretched from Whitby and Beverley in the East to Kendal and Ulverston in the West.
Festival of Ideas Fringe event: Family fun day at the HRC: Eighteenth-century booth
CECS students enthusiastically join in with an HRC-organised event, teaching eighteenth-century dance and the use of fans - and tweeted about it on the CECS twitter site.
And a page of photos for our two-day Art Festival held at the King's Manor:
Arts Festival: Encounters, Affinities, Legacies: the eighteenth century in the present day