ATHENS, Ga. – “Renaissance Stagings,” a conference that will include paper presentations and panel discussions by scholars, a performance by the Town and Gown Players and scenes from period plays, will take place in Athens and on the University of Georgia campus March 28-29.
The event, which involves a number of UGA faculty members and students, was the brainchild of Frances Teague, a professor of Renaissance literature in the Department of English at UGA.
“In 2001, I was sitting in a bar in Spain, where I’d gone for a conference, with Ed, a friend from South Carolina,” said Teague. “We began to wonder why we had to travel to Spain to chat at a conference when we were so close to home. From that came the vague idea that, sometime, folks in this region who worked on Renaissance drama really ought to get together and talk about their work.”
When Teague discovered that her colleague in the English department, John Vance, was directing Aphra Behn’s play The Rover at Town and Gown in late March, it seemed a perfect tie-in for a conference. Soon, drama professor Freda Scott Giles got one of her classes involved as well. Students in Giles’s and Teague’s classes will organize and run conference events.
The panel discussion will begin at 2 p.m. on Friday, March 28, in room 261 of Park Hall and will continue until noon on Saturday in room 265 Park, when scenes from the Renaissance plays will be performed at the President’s Club Garden behind Old College. The Rover will be presented by the Town and Gown Theater at the Athens Community Playhouse off Prince Avenue in Athens behind the historic Taylor-Grady House.
Invited participants include Andrew Hartley, West Georgia State University; Christy Desmet, UGA; Ed Gieskes, Nina Levine and Larry Rhu, University of South Carolina; Jim Hirsh, Georgia State University; Helen Hull, University of Maryland; Brian Jay Corrigan, North Georgia College and State University; and Kirk Melnikoff, University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
For full information, visit the conference Web site at www.arches.uga.edu/~fteague/RDConf.html.
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