Sara Brenes Akerman

Graduate Student, Literature
Pronouns: she/her

I'm currently at work on my dissertation, provisionally titled "Transcending the Ideology of Print: Shakespeare, Originality, and Performance." Starting from the assumption that a canonical Shakespeare play is, as M.J. Kidnie explains, “less a thing or object, than it is an unbounded diachronic series of events,” my dissertation explores 20th-century Shakespeare performances in which the textual interpretation of a given play comes into conflict with the enacted performance. I pay special attention to shifts in performance traditions that put pressure on notions like “original” and “authentic,” particularly when what is meaningful to audiences in the moment of performance comes into conflict with textual interpretation. Overall, I aim to explore how what Diana Taylor terms the repertoire—"performances, gestures, orality, movement, dance, singing—in short, all those acts usually thought of as ephemeral, nonreproducible knowledge”—modifies the ontological boundaries of the Shakespearean play text.

I also write short stories (like this one https://themolotovcocktail.com/vol-11/flash-monster-2020/glorious-feeling/) on the side.

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