Inaugural lecture Parallel Power: Shakespeare, gunfire and silence by Professor Paul Heritage Professor of Drama and Performance at Queen Mary University of London

Parallel Power: Shakespeare, gunfire and silence`

8 June 2004, Rio de Janeiro. According to a Reuters news report, Shakespeare silenced the guns in no-man`s land separating two warring gangs.This lecture looks at a prodution of Antony and Cleopatra performed on the frontier between two Brazilian shanty-towns. Exploring the nature of the divided city, Paul Heritage will place the performance of Shakespeare within the context of the gang culture that dominates the borderlands of Rio de Janeiro.

Professor Paul Heritage

Paul Heritage has, for over 20 years, combined academic and professional activity in theatre. He was a director with Gay Sweatshop and is one the founders of The Theatre in Prisions and Probation Centre, at the University of Manchester.
His main research is in the field of human righs and performance, and he is the director of two large-scale programmes in Brazilian prisons. Thousands of prisoners and guards from Rio to the Amazon have participated in these programmes. He has written and edited a range of publications on theatre and social development.
For `Staging Human Rights`, Paul Heritage was awarded the Premio Betinho in 2001, a major human rights prize. In 2004 he was awarded one of the British Council`s 70th Anniversary Awards and in the same year the Brazilian government made him a Knight of the Order of the Rio Branco. He has a studio theatre named after him in the maximum security prison of Brasilia.

The School of English and Drama
The School of English and Drama, part of the Faculty of Arts, gained the top rating of `excellent` in the national Teaching Quality Assessment review. In the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) - an intesive peer review of scholarship produced within British universities - the School received grade `5` (out of 5) as a reflection of its international standing. We are proud of our excellence in teaching and reserach as it creates the ideal setting for graduate study: a world-class faculty working on the frontiers of knowledge and understanding, high-quality instruction and personal supervision.

Queen Mary, University of London
Queen Mary is third largest multi-faculty college within the University of London with over 9,600 undergraduate and postgraduate students, with an academic and support staff of around 2,600. Queen Mary incorporates a School of Medicine and Dentistry and faculties of Arts, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Law and Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. It is a research university, with over 80 per cent of research staff working in departments where research is of international or national excellent (RAE 2001).

Inaugural lecture Parallel Power: Shakespeare, gunfire and silence by Professor Paul Heritage Thursday 5 May 2005 at 5.30pm Skeel Lecture Theatre People`s Palace Queen Mary, University of London Mile End Road London E1 4NS

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Tea at 5pm in the Gallery Restaurant
A reception in the Gallery Restautant will follow the lecture

Please e-mail events@qmul.ac.uk or call the Events Office to register
Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 5147

At 8pm, there will be a 'work in progress' screening of SHANTYTOWN SHAKESPEARE, a documentary film about the staging of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA in the killing ground between the two favelas of Vigário Geral and Parada de Lucas in Rio de Janeiro. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA was performed by a cast of Brazil's leading TV, stage and film actors and directed by Paul Heritage. The film was directed by Kristiene Clarke and produced by Immaculate Productions in association with People's Palace Projects and Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae.

Please contact Yassmin Foster if you would like to attend the screening on 020 78827823 or y.foster@qmul.ac.uk. Tickets are free but need to be booked in advance.

Further info:

www.peoplespalace.org.br/default_en.asp

www.qmul.ac.uk