Infinite variety

Amy Kenny has the best of both worlds, combining her study of Shakespeare with a backstage role at the Globe. Frank le Duc reports

A Sussex University student is helping some of Britain’s leading Shakespearean actors to improve their understanding of ‘The Bard’s’ work. Amy Kenny, 24, is combining her studies with a role at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Her role is off-stage and involves giving advice and carrying out research. Her expertise is in family life in the Elizabethan era.

Mrs Kenny is studying for a doctorate in English at Sussex and teaches first year undergraduates at the Falmer campus. Her work at the Globe means that, unlike many scholars, she gets to put her studies to practical use. At the same time she says her theatre work breathes life into her studies and helps with her teaching. And thousands will get to see the results of that work as the Globe’s season gets under way on Thursday (7 June).

Does she get starstruck? “It depends who it is. But at the Globe I just get awestruck with the building. This isn’t the original Globe, but it has been built using the original measurements and construction materials.” As a result, she said, there’s something unique and exciting about working there.

The current season includes the award-winning actor Mark Rylance. He is returning to the Globe in the title role in Richard III and is reprising his role as Olivia in Twelfth Night. As in Shakespeare’s time, the productions feature an all-male cast. She said: “I’ve already done a bit of research for the casting director. She wanted to know what type of males she should be casting – strong burlesque males or effeminate ones? They would have had younger adolescents playing the female roles originally.

“One of the great disservices we do shakespeare is to call him boring”

“Twelfth Night will be interesting as the play makes so much of gender. It will be interesting to see what the men make of the female roles, especially as they’re so important in that play. I’m also working on the other plays in the season (Henry V and The Taming of the Shrew).

“I’m originally from Australia and lived in California but I came to London to study Shakespeare. I liked it so much that in 2009 I decided to stay on to do a doctorate. I’m looking at Shakespeare’s representation of the family and how he depicts marriage, childhood and adolescence and comparing my findings to the contemporary beliefs about families at that time. Shakespeare often manipulates his source material to highlight the family. Even in Hamlet he doesn’t focus on the regicide but on the fact that a father is killed.”

She said that one of the reasons that she came to Sussex was the Centre for Early Modern Studies which brings together specialists in different subjects. Her own research requires a knowledge of history as well as literature and drama.

She said that it was important to see his plays as drama rather than literature and added that the Globe was good at bringing the words to life. She said: “That’s something the Globe does particularly well, highlighting the humour and the bawdy nature of the language and the comedy. One of the great disservices we do to Shakespeare is to call him boring and old-fashioned. I’ve had a wonderful time there and it’s been such a great experience. A lot of people don’t get the chance to do something like this until much later in their career.”

Mrs Kenny is one of thousands of overseas students who have come to Sussex to study. The university will be one of the hardest hit financially if the government includes students in its immigration clampdown. Vice chancellor Michael Farthing and Simon Fanshawe, chairman of the university’s council, have been lobbying ministers and officials on the issue.

If the government refuses to compromise, there may be a knock-on effect for jobs in Brighton and Hove. A report two years ago suggested that Brighton University and Sussex jointly contributed more than £1 billion to the local economy and helped support 12,000 jobs. It is not just the future understanding and enjoyment of our national playwright that is at risk.