Milton Public Library

Queen Goneril, Erin Shields

eng

no index present

non fiction

Queen Goneril

electronic resource

dictionaries

Erin Shields

This feminist, revisionist King Lear prequel centres the daughters as they negotiate patriarchal systems built to keep them relegated to the sidelines. Set seven years before King Lear, Queen Goneril centres the struggles of Lear's daughters as they negotiate patriarchal systems built to keep them relegated to the sidelines. In Goneril, we find a natural-born leader. In Regan, a boundary pusher. And in Cordelia, a reluctant peacekeeper. As the three work to dismantle their individual constraints, a storm of inner reckoning begins to brew that reflects their deepest yearnings and mirrors our contemporary world. Whip smart and wide awake, Queen Goneril is another deliciously disruptive adaptation from Erin Shields. In her signature revisionist style, Shields investigates some of our most urgent feminist issues by reimagining the roles of women in classic texts-shifting them from subjects, objects, or witnesses to central figures of both their own lives and the story's narrative. Queen Goneril lays bare the challenges of maintaining authenticity while achieving authority-how we retain a strong sense of self while twisting around systems meant to make us play small. A compelling story about complicated characters struggling-the way we all struggle-to find their place in this world. "Queen Goneril stays credible and remains compelling to its conclusion-and, thankfully, has its own enjoyable in-between dramatic voice; nothing too mock-Shakespearean, but unafraid to sample and remix his words." "Shields' script imbues the sisters with complex and sympathetic human motivations-love, empathy, fear, jealousy, shame, rage-which are constricted by the suffocating cellophane of social mores, race, class and gender. These are characters striving to be their best, while society and circumstance reduce them to clawing holes and gasping for air." "... a post-modern wink to let us know that the crimes and micro-aggressions against women in the past still exist." - Multiple academic tie-ins: feminist, revisionist prequel of classic literature. - Erin is renowned and uniquely skilled for this approach to storytelling. - Education: Rose Bruford College London, UK (1996-1999) - Hons, BA / University of Toronto, English Department (2004-2008) - Hons, BA. - Queen Goneril was commissioned and first produced by Soulpepper Theatre Company in 2022

adult