Bryan Reynolds
Encyclopedia
Bryan Reynolds is an American critical theorist
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...

, performance theorist
Performance Studies
Performance studies have been growing as an academic field since the 1960s. Performance studies believe in the social act of Doing as it takes performance itself as the object of inquiry.The process of defining it becomes a practice in performance studies itself...

, and Shakespeare scholar who developed the combined social theory, performance aesthetics, and research methodology known as transversal poetics. He is also a playwright, director, and cofounder of the Transversal Theater Company, a collective of American and Dutch artists, which has produced several of his works. Reynolds received his bachelor degree in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, and his master's and doctoral degrees in English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. He is a Professor of Drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

 at the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...

, where he has taught since 1998. He has held visiting professorships at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

-Drama, the University of Amsterdam-Theater Studies, Utrecht University
Utrecht University
Utrecht University is a university in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. Established March 26, 1636, it had an enrollment of 29,082 students in 2008, and employed 8,614 faculty and staff, 570 of which are full professors....

-Theater Studies, University of Cologne
University of Cologne
The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...

-American Studies, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main-American Studies, and University College Utrecht
University College Utrecht
University College Utrecht is an international Honors College of Utrecht University . UCU is a selective liberal arts, undergraduate college of 700 students within Utrecht University. Located between the two UU sites, Uithof and City Center, it has its own residential campus in the city of...

-Arts and Humanities, and he has taught at Deleuze Camp at Schloss Wahn, University of Cologne, Germany, and the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław, Poland, among other academic and performing arts institutions.

Critical works

  • “The Devil’s House, ‘or worse’: Transversal Power and Antitheatrical Discourse in Early Modern England” (1997)


“The Devil’s House, 'or worse’” is the first published text for Reynolds’ transversal theory. In this article, transversal theory is delineated through an analysis of early modern English theater, both on the public stage and as in social performances in society at large. The article argues for the power of theater to simultaneously alter subjectivity and social identity as well as the political, economic, and social conditions under which they operate. Using spatial and temporal models for both abstract and material relations within and between individuals and groups, as well as in relation to things, transversal theory explains changes in human cognition, perspective, and experience, particularly those that move subjectivity away from habit, singularity, and stasis.
  • Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England (2002)


Becoming Criminal shows how the dissident activities and idiosyncratic languages of gypsies, rogues, vagabonds, and cutpurses interacted with normative society and culture. Reynolds argues that the real and imaginary “criminal culture” on the streets and in popular minds has been overlooked or misunderstood by scholars. He traces the effect of criminal culture to its emergence in the sixteenth century, when this community related daily with dominant aspects of English ideology and culture and modeled its own cultural characteristics in response to the conventions of the time. According to Reynolds, their behavior and thought is most evident in the period’s commercial literature, such as in pamphlet literature and the works of Shakespeare, Jonson
Jonson
Jonson is a surname, and may refer to:* Ben Jonson , English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor* Gail Jonson , former medley and butterfly swimmer* Mattias Jonson , Swedish professional football player...

, Fletcher
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...

, and Brome
Richard Brome
Richard Brome was an English dramatist of the Caroline era.-Life:Virtually nothing is known about Brome's private life. Repeated allusions in contemporary works, like Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, indicate that Brome started out as a servant of Jonson, in some capacity...

, and in its material and symbolic relationships to the public theatre.
  • Performing Transversally: Reimagining Shakespeare and the Critical Future (2003)


Reynolds’ transversal poetics project, expanded from his early works, is used in Performing Transversally to discuss historical and contemporary examples. He discusses the applicability of the critical concept, ranging from the sociology of Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born sociologist and writer.The 73rd president of American Sociological Association, Goffman's greatest contribution to social theory is his study of symbolic interaction in the form of dramaturgical perspective that began with his 1959 book The Presentation of Self...

 to the feminism and psychoanalytics of Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...

 to the dramatic and theatrical criticism of Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...

 and Herbert Blau
Herbert Blau
A director and theoretician of performance, Herbert Blau is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington...

. Performing Transversally navigates the ever-increasing cultural cartography of Shakespace, a term invented by Reynolds and Donald Hedrick in Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital, to designate past, present, and future Shakespeare influenced spaces of text, performance, and culture. Throughout the book, Reynolds emphasizes the importance of accountability, whether in the classroom, in academic research, on the stage or screen, or in everyday lives.
  • Transversal Enterprises in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Fugitive Explorations (2006)


In Transversal Enterprises, with a number of collaborators, Reynolds analyzes plays by early modern English dramatists in the context of shifts in English history. He relates transversal poetics to other academic disciplines, including science and theology, to explore a transformation in views on space and place in relation to subjectivity and consciousness. Witches, werewolves, occultists, academicians, transvestites, baboons, moors, and gypsies, among other creatures, all reflect, for Reynolds, a metamorphic and intersubjective phenomenology for which art or artifice is requisite.
  • Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida (2009)


Transversal Subjects traces the genealogy of Transversal Poetics from discourses on human rights, compassion, and psychopathology in the work of Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...

 and Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

 through Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...

, Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...

, Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...

, Agamben
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben is an Italian political philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer....

, Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...

, Rancière
Jacques Rancière
Jacques Rancière is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris Jacques Rancière (born Algiers, 1940) is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee...

, and others. In so doing, Reynolds makes the case that subjectivity is an emergent, shifting, and mobile phenomenon that is transversal to the subject. This allows access to affecters and enablers of transversal processes that work to empower individuals and groups in their comprehension and experience of themselves, others, and the world.

Recent honours

2008: Silver Award: Experimental Web Site, 5th Annual Pcom Creative Awards (Creative Director, Bryan Reynolds; Designer/Illustrator/Animator/Programmer, Alex Sacui)http://www.creativeshake.com/award/2008/winners_main.php?category=w

2006: Honored as a Distinguished Alumnus of Scarsdale High School
Scarsdale High School
Scarsdale High School is a public high school in Scarsdale, New York, a coterminous town and village in Westchester County, New York. The school was founded in 1917...

, New York. http://scarsdalealumni.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=82

2005: “Chancellor’s Fellow” by the University of California http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4735

2004: Honored by the University of Alabama’s Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies, directed by Gary Taylor
Gary Taylor
Gary Taylor may refer to:*Gary Taylor , winner of the 1993 World's Strongest Man competition* Gary Taylor , American professor and writer...

, as "one of the six most brilliant Renaissance scholars in the world under 40," "for work on ‘transversal poetics.’" http://www.shaksper.net/archives/2004/1926.html

Books written

  • Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
  • Transversal Enterprises in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Fugitive Explorations (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
  • Performing Transversally: Reimagining Shakespeare and the Critical Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
  • Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

Books edited

  • The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive, Co-Editor, with Paul Cefalu (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
  • Critical Responses to Kiran Desai, Co-Editor, with Sunita Sinha (New Delhi, India: Atlantic Publishers 2009).
  • Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern English Stage, Co-Editor, with William West (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
  • Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital, Co-Editor, with Donald Hedrick (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).

Plays

  • Unbuckled (play), The Anthology of Contemporary Plays 2004 (Sibiu, Romania: Annual Publication of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival, 2004).
    • Productions: Directors Bryan Reynolds & Jef Vowell, The Flight Theatre, Hollywood, California, July 2004; Andrei Muresanu Theatre, Sfântu-Gheorghe, Romania, June 2004; Ariel Theatre, Târgu Mureş, Romania, June 2004; The National Theatre, Cluj, Romania, June 2004; Festivalul International de Teatru de la Sibiu
      Festivalul International de Teatru de la Sibiu
      The International Theatre Festival in Sibiu is the most important annual festival of performing arts in The International Theatre Festival in Sibiu is the most important annual festival of [[performing arts]] in...

      , Romania, May–June 2004.http://www.sibfest.ro/FITS.html
  • Woof, Daddy (play).
    • Productions: Director Amanda McRaven, Linhart Theater, New York City, August 2007. Director Amanda McRaven, Exit Theatre
      EXIT Theatre
      EXIT Theatre is an alternative theater located at 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco, California, in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood. The theater operates four storefront theaters and annually produces the San Francisco Fringe Festival, the second oldest fringe festival in the U.S...

      , San Francisco, September 2006. Director Eli Simon: Rampa-Teatr Na Targówku, Warsaw, Poland, April 2005; Teatr Polski-Malarnia, Poznan, Poland, April 2005; Teatr Kana, Szczecin, Poland, April 2005. Director Bryan Reynolds, Melkweg
      Melkweg
      The Melkweg is a popular music venue and cultural center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It is located on the Lijnbaansgracht, near the Leidseplein, a prime nightlife center of Amsterdam. It is housed in a former warehouse and is divided into a number of spaces of varying sizes...

       Theater, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, September 2008.
  • Railroad (play), Plays International (London: The Performing Arts Trust, October, 2006).
    • Productions: Director Robert Cohen
      Robert Cohen (acting theorist)
      Robert Cohen is an American university professor, theatre director, playwright, and drama critic. He has written many books on theatre, two dramatic anthologies and many plays, among other works. Cohen has conducted advanced teaching residencies in numerous countries and much of the United States...

      : Sibiu International Theatre Festival, Romania, May–June 2006; The National Theatre, Cluj, Romania, May 2006.
  • Blue Shade (play), in Plays International (London: The Performing Arts Trust, October, 2008) and in English and Romanian (Cluj: Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj Press, 2007).
  • Lumping in Fargo (musical).
    • Productions: Director Christopher Marshall, Los Angeles New American Music Theatre Festival, June 2008 http://www.lafestival.org/index.php; Teatr Rozrywki, Chorzów, Poland, July 2008; and 12th International Shakespeare Festival
      Gdańsk Shakespeare Festival
      Gdańsk Shakespeare Festival is an international theatre festival devoted to the idea of the Elizabethan theatre, and especially to the works of William Shakespeare. The event was first organized in 1993, on the initiative of Theatrum Gedanense Foundation, which had been created by prof. Jerzy Limon...

      , Gdańsk
      Gdansk
      Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...

      , Poland, August 2008.http://www.teatr-szekspir.gda.pl/index2.php
  • Eve’s Rapture (play).
    • Productions: Director Robert Cohen, Hayworth Theatre, Los Angeles, May–June 2009.
  • The Green Knight (play).
    • Productions: Director Bryan Reynolds, World Premiere, 17th Annual Festivalul International de Teatru de la Sibiu, Cisnădioara Fortress, Romania, June 2010.
  • Macbeth adapted and directed by Bryan Reynolds, Studio-T, University College Utrecht, Netherlands, September 2010.
  • Romeo & Juliet adapted and directed by Bryan Reynolds, Studio-T, University College Utrecht, Netherlands, September 2011.


Selected articles

  • "The Devil’s House, ‘or worse’: Transversal Power and Antitheatrical Discourse in Early Modern England," Theatre Journal 49:2 (May 1997).
  • "The Transversality of Michel de Certeau: Foucault's Panoptic Discourse and the Cartographic Impulse," with Joseph Fitzpatrick in Diacritics 29:3 (Fall 1999).
  • "The Making of Authorships: Transversal Navigation in the Wake of Hamlet, Robert Wilson, Wolfgang Wiens, and Shakespace," with D.J. Hopkins, in Shakespeare After Mass Media, Ed. Richard Burt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
  • "The Reckoning of Moll Cutpurse: A Transversal Enterprise," with Janna Segal, Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, Eds. Craig Dionne and Steve Mentz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).
  • “Transversal Poetics and Fugitive Explorations: Subject Performance, Early Modern English Theatre, and Macbeth,” in Early Theatre 7:2 (2004).
  • "EuroShakespace and the Witness-Function: Convergences of History, Memory, and Affective Presence," in Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation, Performance vol. 4, Ed. Lawrence Gunter (University of Łódź Press, 2007).
  • "Transversal Acting," with Chris Marshall in Semiotic Review of Books 17.1 (2007).
  • "From Homo Academicus to Poeta Publicus: Celebrity and Transversal Knowledge in Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (c. 1589)," with Henry Turner, Writing Robert Greene: New Essays on England’s First Professional Writer, Eds. Edward Gieskes and Kirk Melnikoff (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Press, 2008).

Reviews of his works

  • Shakespeare Without Class
    • Worthen, W.B. Review of Hedrick and Reynolds, Shakespeare Without Class. “Recent Studies in Tudor and Stuart Drama,” Studies in English Literature. 42.2 (2002) 399-448.
    • Taylor, Mark. Review of Hedrick and Reynolds, Shakespeare Without Class. Renaissance Quarterly 56:3 (Autumn 2003): 936-39.
  • Becoming Criminal
    • Beier, A.L. Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. Modern Philology. (May 2005) 102:4: 550-7.
    • CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. August 2006 v43 i11-12 p1995(1).
    • Cohen, Stephen. Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. The Sixteenth Century Journal. 35:2 (Summer 2004): 576-577.
    • Cunningham, Karen. Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. Theatre Survey, 45:1 (May 2004): 149-151.
    • Engel, William. Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. Seventeenth-Century News, Volume 61, 3&4 (Fall-Winter 2003): 286-289.
    • Hodgdon, Barbara. Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. Studies in English Literature. 43:2 (Spring 2003): 501-502.
    • Steve Mentz, Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. CLIO: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History. 33:1 (Fall 2003 ): 73-77.
    • --- Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. The Shakespeare Newsletter (Spring 2003): 9-10.
    • Mowry, Melissa. Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. Journal of British Studies. Jan 2005 v44 i1 p178(9).
    • Nesvet, Rebecca. Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. EMLS 2004.
    • Pollard, Tanya. Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. Renaissance Quarterly. 57:2 (Summer 2004): 750-51.
    • Review of Reynolds, Becoming Criminal. Reference & Research Book News. Feb 2004 v19 i1 p237(1).
  • Performing Transversally
    • Berek, Peter. Review of Reynolds, Performing Transversally. Renaissance Quarterly. 57:4 (2004), 1527-29.
    • Cartelli, Thomas. Review of Reynolds, Performing Transversally. Theatre Journal. May 2005 v57 i2 p329(3).
  • Rematerializing Shakespeare
    • Boehrer, Bruce. Review of Reynolds and William West Ed., Rematerializing Shakespeare in Recent Studies in Tudor and Stuart Drama, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 47.2 (2007) 491-550: 525-528.
  • Transversal Enterprises
    • Cohen, Adam Max. Review of Reynolds, Transversal Enterprises. Early Theatre, Vol. 11: 1 (2008).
    • Engel, William E. Review of Reynolds, Transversal Enterprises. “A Rich Harvest: Recent Books on Shakespeare.” Sewanee Review, Volume 117, Number 4, Fall 2009, pp. 655–665.
    • Cefalu, Paul. Review of Reynolds, Transversal Enterprises. Shakespeare Quarterly. 58.2 (2007) 257-260.
    • Hansen, Matthew C., Review of Reynolds, Transversal Enterprises. The Year's Work in English Studies. 87:1 (2008) 336-506.
    • Hawkes, David. Review of Reynolds, Transversal Enterprises. Theatre Survey. 50:1 (2009), 141-143.
  • Transversal Subjects
  • Other works
  • Interviews

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK