Shakespeare's "Dramatic Style" at the Curtain: A Collaborative Model for Site-Responsive Practice-as-Research

This article advances a site-responsive Practice-as-Research (PaR) methodology that draws contested approaches to Shakespeare's "style" into productive conversation through collaborative research. Treating "dramatic style" as the reciprocal relationship between textual aesthetics (what a play-text contains) and performance utility (how it activates in specific spaces), this model is applied to Shakespeare's play-texts at the Curtain Playhouse. A case study of Q1 & Q2 Romeo and Juliet suggests a series of site-responsive adaptations at the Curtain: Q2's expanded combat sequences exploit the playhouse's wider stage; staggered entrances negotiate its shallow depth; and repeated auditory cues engage playgoers across the site's fluid yard spaces. Virtual workshops encouraged international collaboration between textual scholars, performance practitioners, and archaeologists, generating "liquid knowledge" (Nelson 60) and offering a replicable framework for collaborative PaR studies at a diversity of newly excavated performance sites.