The Early Modern Stage between Baroque and Enlightenment: Vondel’s Century

Event details

Although less well-known than the art of Rembrandt and Vermeer, the Amsterdam stage of the seventeenth century grew into one of the most dynamic and open theatre cultures of early modern Europe; a hub of creative production, translation and cross-cultural collaboration. Vondel’s Century is the first English-language conference to highlight the work of the poet and playwright Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), whose corpus includes more than thirty plays, as well as epic, religious and philosophical poetry, and translations of classical authors including Sophocles, Euripides, Virgil, and Seneca.  He was a politically outspoken writer, often straying beyond the boundaries of censored speech and engaged in every significant intellectual debate of his times, from religious toleration to the rise of the Dutch colonial empire, or the emergence of the philosophical rationalism of Spinoza. The conference brings together researchers from across different disciplines, including theatre historians, literary scholars, intellectual historians, as well as theatre practitioners.

Keynote speakers are Nigel Smith (Princeton University) and Tiffany Stern (Birmingham University/ The Shakespeare Institute)

The conference is preceded on 19 September by a CREMS theatre workshop led by Tiffany Stern and Imre Besanger, actor and director of Theatre Group Kwast, in which we will discuss some scenes from Vondel’s plays from page to stage. For more information, contact VondelsCentury@gmail.com

Location: In-person and online