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UID:20250927T0022Z-1758932560.5237-EO-26478-39@10.19.146.22
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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SUMMARY: Romance\, Agnosticism\, and Theatre’s ‘Rough Magic’
DESCRIPTION: The UBC Department of English Language & Literatures is please
 d to invite you to a talk by Dr. Michael Ullyot (Department of English\, Un
 iversity of Calgary). Abstract Shakespeare’s romances demand our provisiona
 l faith. When Paulina commands viewers to “Awake your faith” before Hermion
 e’s resurrection\, she underscores how witnessing miracles requires belief 
 before sight. These plays’ […]
X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html: <p>[image_spread img_url="https://engl.cms.ar
 ts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2025/09/Romance-Agnosticism-and-Theat
 res-Rough-Magic.png" caption="" width="website"]</p><hr /><p class="Paragra
 ph" style="margin-bottom: 4.2pt\;"><span lang="EN-GB">The UBC Department of
  English Language & Literatures is pleased to invite you to a talk by <stro
 ng>Dr. Michael Ullyot</strong> (Department of English\, University of Calga
 ry).</span></p><h4 class="Paragraph" style="margin-bottom: 4.2pt\;"><span l
 ang="EN-GB">Abstract</span></h4><p class="Paragraph" style="margin-bottom: 
 4.2pt\;"><span lang="EN-GB">Shakespeare's romances demand our provisional f
 aith. When Paulina commands viewers to “Awake your faith" before Hermione's
  resurrection\, she underscores how witnessing miracles requires belief bef
 ore sight. These plays’ temporal leaps\, geographical impossibilities\, and
  divine interventions are all miracles that succeed only when the audience 
 overlooks theatre’s representational imperfections\, or what Prospero calls
  his "rough magic.” Theatre’s bounded space and visible machinery naturally
  acknowledge its artifice. Whereas film conceals it\; hence Julie Taymor's 
 <em>Tempest</em> (2010) drowns in photorealistic effects\, while film adapt
 ations of <em>Pericles</em>\, <em>The Winter's Tale</em>\, and <em>Cymbelin
 e</em> are nonexistent or forgettable.</span></p><p class="Paragraph" style
 ="margin-bottom: 4.2pt\;"><span lang="EN-GB">Filmed theatre offers a third 
 way\, a hybrid medium that achieves cinematic fluidity while preserving the
 atre’s provisionality and situatedness. Two pandemic productions exemplify 
 this hybridity: The National Theatre's <em>Romeo and Juliet</em> (2021) and
  Theatre Royal Windsor's <em>Hamlet</em> (2021) transform whole buildings i
 nto performance spaces\, their cameras navigating lobbies\, dressing rooms\
 , and rehearsal halls. Like the three RSC romances this paper examines — <e
 m>The Tempest</em> (2016)\, <em>Cymbeline</em> (2016)\, and <em>The Winter'
 s Tale</em> (2021) — these productions maintain what Aneta Mancewicz calls 
 "intermedial stratigraphy\,” making multiple representational layers visibl
 e simultaneously. This layered consciousness produces not theological certa
 inty but theatrical agnosticism. Our wonder at romance arises from seeing b
 oth the miracle and the machinery at once.</span></p><p><strong>About the S
 peaker</strong></p><p>Michael Ullyot is Associate Professor in the Departme
 nt of English\, University of Calgary. His teaching and research specialtie
 s are early modern literature and Shakespeare studies. Recent work includes
  articles and chapters on Shakespeare and virtual reality\; on algorithms f
 or detecting rhetorical figures\; on a quantitative model of the English-la
 nguage sonnet\; and on archives and artificial intelligence. He is the auth
 or of <em>The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Early Modern England </em>(Oxford 
 University Press\, 2022).</p><p> </p>
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