Stavreva co-authors exploration of ‘Merchant of Venice’
Cornell Professor of English Kirilka Stavreva has teamed up with author Boika Sokolova to explore new and historical performances of “The Merchant of Venice” in their newly released book “The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare in Performance).”
This is the second edition of the title; it adds to the research of the first edition, written in 1990 by James C. Bulman, a book-length section by Stavreva and Sokolova, containing new research and findings. Throughout the richly illustrated volume, readers look back at the play’s historical stagings and examine its contemporary productions, including cinema. The authors pay close attention to the social and historical pressures shaping the play’s performances.
“This book showcases the creativity and courage of theatre and filmmakers in revising, fragmenting, and estranging Shakespeare’s classic text, directly challenging it or appropriating it to speak to the intersecting stories of victimization of Black and Brown people, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, women, and queer people,” Stavreva said.
Work on the book started in the summer of 2016, shortly after Stavreva received an intensely competitive Fulbright Global Flex award. The authors attended performances, interviewed theatre professionals, studied archival collections, and engaged in collaborative dialogues. The book was published after nearly seven years of collaboration, research, and revisions. Stavreva says she is proud of the outcome.
“There are so many misconceptions about the performance history of “The Merchant of
Venice”: that it was the favorite play of the Nazi regime; that it is anti-Jewish; that the dominant late 20th-century approach to the play, which privileges economic clashes over ethnic and religious conflicts, is to be credited to British theatre; that the first cinematic adaptation of the play in the 21st century was Michael Radford’s Hollywood film. We have set the historical record straight on these and other issues, and perhaps more importantly, have documented, analyzed, and shared our fascination with ephemeral theatre history.”
This isn’t the end of Stavreva’s and Sokolova’s research plans, and the duo of writers is already at work on their next book. After a year of laying a collaborative theoretical and historical groundwork with colleagues from 12 universities in eight countries–a project sponsored by the International Visegrad Fund, in which Cornell College was the sole U.S. representative–the co-authors are examining Shakespearean adaptations by East-Central European playwrights whose performances have crossed national and media borders. They have been invited to present their early findings, showcasing the networked nature of modern Shakespeare performance, in a keynote address at the 2025 conference of the European Shakespeare Research Association in Porto, Portugal.
The book is published by Manchester University Press.
