How can theatre and Shakespearean performance be used with different communities to assist personal growth and development, while advancing social justice goals? Employing an integrative approach that draws from science, actor training, therapeutical practices and current research on the senses, this study reveals the work being done by drama practitioners with a range of specialized populations, such as incarcerated people, neurodiverse individuals, those with physical or emotional disabilities, veterans, persons labeled 'rough sleepers' and many others. With insights drawn from visits to numerous international programs, it argues that these endeavors succeed when they engage all five human senses and incorporate kinesthetic learning, thereby tapping into the diverse benefits associated with artistic, movement and mindfulness practices. Neither theatre nor Shakespeare is universally beneficial, but the syncretic practices described in this book offer tools for physical, emotional and collaborative undertakings that assist personal growth and development, while advancing social justice goals. Among the practitioners and companies whose work is examined here are programs from the Shakespeare in Prison Network, the International Opera Theater, Blue Apple Theatre, Flute Theatre, DeCruit and Feast of Crispian programs for veterans, Extant Theatre and prison programs in Kolkata and Mysore, India.

The essays in this volume analyze strategies adopted by contemporary novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and biographers interested in bringing the stories of early modern women to modern audiences. It also pays attention to the historical women creators themselves, who, be they saints or midwives, visual artists or poets and playwrights, stand out for their roles as active practitioners of their own arts and for their accomplishments as creators. Whether they delivered infants or governed as monarchs, or produced embroideries, letters, paintings or poems, their visions, the authors argue, have endured across the centuries. As the title of the volume suggests, the essays gathered here participate in a wider conversation about the relation between biography, historical fiction, and the growing field of biofiction (that is, contemporary fictionalizations of historical figures), and explore the complicated interconnections between celebrating early modern women and perpetuating popular stereotypes about them.

..". very readable, lucid, intriguing study... " -- SpenserNewsletter

..". a very thoroughgoing inventory of the cruelmale fantasies and nightmares imposed on... female-gendered figures... " --Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"Cavanagh has managedto give an almost entirely new reading of [The Faerie Queene]; it is the firstfeminist rereading of the entire epic, and it reshapes the contours of the huge poemin often startling and remarkable ways." -- Maureen Quilligan, University ofPennsylvania