Medieval World Drama Working Group: Special Event in May/June 2024!
The Medieval World Drama Working Group (MWDRG), a Jackman Humanities Institute Working Group run in conjunction with PLS, usually takes form as a monthly gathering of academics, performers, students, and friends in Toronto who want to expand our knowledge of premodern drama by cold-reading English translations of non-English plays from before the year 1550 (preferably before 1500) — if you’d like to know more about our usual group, scroll down. But for now, I’d like to tell you about our SPECIAL INVITED WORKSHOP READING EVENT:
COMING FRI MAY 31 (7PM) AND
SAT JUNE 1 (5PM, after Q&A at 2:30PM):
THE INFATUATED AND THE RAVISHING
a workshop reading* of Muḥammad ibn Dāniyāl’s raunchy, shocking, queer shadow play from 13th/14th-century Cairo
in a new translation into English by Prof. Li Guo (U Notre Dame)
set into rhyme and rhythmic dialogue by Prof. Matthew Sergi (U Toronto)
presented by PLS and the Jackman Humanities Institute’s Medieval World Drama Working Group
“a mess of men were pressing at the door, his / shirt already stripped off, awfully gorgeous / surrounded by the staring eyes of tourists / another knockout! he for sure hits one-fifty / perfect score, his win wholly, and the gamblers’ / and the fans’, who’d been adding holy blessings (‘Yasin! Taha!’) to their cheers, alms / tossed right on his arms, gold dinars, silver dirhams / collecting on his shoulders and here he comes / closer to me in the dark, his shining face, this — moon / my lunatic heart abducted, as soon as I saw him / my mind aswoon, awestruck, vexed / on the spot I came up with the song I’ll sing next…”
The Infatuated and the Ravishing (al-Mutayyam wal-̣Dā’i‘ al-Yutayyim), composed by Muḥammad Ibn Dāniyāl (c. 1249-1310), is an Arabic shadow play written across multiple verse forms, connected by dialogue in rhythmic, rhyming prose. It centers on “The Infatuated,” a middle-aged man from Mosul who has fallen in love – or, often, into predatory lust – with a much younger Cairene man, “The Ravishing.”
The play takes queer erotics as its given circumstance and, in language that alternates between the subtly beautiful and the shockingly graphic, directly addresses (and often makes flippant jokes of) unsettling, disturbing, and very sensitive topics and content.
(*At a workshop reading, expect a lightly rehearsed early showing of a new/developing play text, before full production has begun — actors hold the scripts in their hands, with minimal movement and production elements, often revealing the text to a public audience for the first time.)
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
FRIDAY MAY 31, 7:00PM | SATURDAY JUNE 1, 5:00PM
with a discussion and Q&A featuring Guo and Sergi on Saturday June 1, 2:30pm
at the Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100
170 St George St., Floor 1
Toronto, ON, M5R 2M8
More about the Medieval World Drama Working Group
In 2019, I started the Medieval World Drama Reading Group (MWDRG), a casual gathering of academics, performers, students, and friends in Toronto who want to expand our knowledge of premodern drama beyond England. The group was adopted as an official part of PLS in spring 2022, then granted funding and status by the Jackman Humanities Institute as a JHI Working Group in fall 2022 — at which point we shifted our name slightly, to become the Medieval World Drama Working Group (MWDWG).
We currently meet on one Wednesday per month, usually the last Wednesday (depending on space availability), 3:30pm to 5pm, to cold read medieval dramatic texts, in translation, from any language other than English.
We never ever ask members to prepare or read material outside of those 90 minutes! One group member will usually volunteer to find, and get us readable copies of, whatever text we’re using at our next meeting — but even that volunteer does not read the text ahead of time (any further than is necessary to get the copies in order). Instead, all of us show up to the text completely cold, and discover it together (even our group organizer, Prof. Matthew Sergi, does not look at the text before we read — we all go in as equals). We assign roles in that day’s play reading based on casual volunteerism: anyone who wants to read a part can do so, but no one has to read if they don't want to.
Our meetings are hybrid in format, allowing participants who have trouble making it in person (or who are currently located far from Toronto) to join our live readings as listeners and performers — but we do strongly encourage in-person attendance if at all possible, because live presence has turned out to make a big difference in how much these texts come to life for us (and it allows us, once in a while, to conduct experiments in real space, as when we recently attempted to walk through the traditional Japanese Noh spatial layout as we read, noting how powerfully physical positions informed the lines we performed).
To attend in person, join us in room 100 of the Jackman Humanities Building (first floor, right in the lobby, of 170 St George St, at the corner of St George and Bloor). If you're coming in person and need a hard copy of the text, RSVP if you can to sergi.utoronto@gmail.com. [NOTE: for our August meeting only, we’ll meet in room 616 rather than room 100.]
To attend remotely, contact sergi.utoronto@gmail.com for a Zoom link (or ask to get onto our group mailing list, from which we announce each upcoming gathering and provide all required links).
Scholars have long disagreed about which plays should count as medieval — that is, about what the cut-off dates for a group like ours should be — and the instability of those dates increases when the range of texts being read cuts across multiple global sources, since the term medieval is defined inherently by its position between geographically specific cultural movements. And don’t even get me started about what should count as drama. So the MWRWG relies on straightforward, if arbitrary, guidelines for what play texts we take on. We limit the play texts we read to those evidently composed (though not necessarily copied down yet) as prompts for live performance (preferably involving more than one speaker), in any language other than English, before 1550 (and preferably before 1500).
This year’s meetings:
August 30, 2023: continuation of Rabinal Achi (Man of Rabinal), translated from the K’iche’
September 20, 2023: Esmoreit, translated from the Dutch
October 25, 2023: Top Graduate Zhang Xie, in a new translation from the medieval Chinese (with a special guest appearance by Prof. Regina Llamas)
November 29, 2023: more from Top Graduate Zhang Xie, in a new translation from the medieval Chinese
January 31, 2024: Le Jeu de Robin et Marion by Adam de la Halle, translated from the French
February 28, 2024: TBA — a Welsh play (to be chosen by Morgan Moore)
March 27, 2024: La Festa et Storia di Sancta Caterina, translated from the Italian
April 10, 2024: more from La Festa et Storia di Sancta Caterina, translated from the Italian
May 31 and June 1 2024: SPECIAL EVENT — an invited, lightly staged reading of Muhammad ibn Daniyal’s Al Mutayyam, newly translated from the medieval Arabic by Prof. Li Guo and set into theatrical verse by yours truly, Prof. Matt Sergi.
Here’s what else we’ve read so far:
October 2019: Short plays by Juan del Encina (in new translations from the Spanish by MWDRG member Alexandra Atiya)
November 2019 (1): Biblical plays, translated from the Welsh
November 2019 (2): Jean Bodel’s Jeu de Saint Nicolas, translated from the French
December 2019: Muhammad ibn Daniyal’s The Phantom, translated from the Arabic (with a special guest presentation by Prof. Jeanne Miller)
February 2020: Short plays by Zeami, translated from the Japanese
November 2020: Gwreans An Bys and Bewnans Ke, translated from the Cornish
February 2021: Short plays by Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, translated from the German
March 2021: More short plays by Zeami, translated from the Japanese (with a special guest presentation by Prof. Jennifer Goodlander)
June 2021: Three farces (in new translations from the French by Prof. Jody Enders, with a special guest presentation by Prof. Enders)
February 2022: Origo Mundi (cont’d) and The Life of Saint Ke, translated from the Cornish
March 2022 (just after Purim 5782): Crescas de Caylar’s Provençal Esther, translated from the Provençal (which was initially written using Hebrew characters)
and Leone de' Sommi's A Comedy of Betrothal (Tsahoth B'dihutha D'Kiddushin), translated from the Hebrew
April 2022: Mary of Nemmegen, translated from the Dutch
May 2022: More short plays by Juan del Encina (in new translations from the Spanish by MWDRG member Alexandra Atiya)
June 2022: Excerpts from the Mystere de la Passion, translated from the French
July 2022: Part I of Muhammad ibn Daniyal’s Al Mutayyam, translated from the Arabic (with a special guest presentation by Prof. Li Guo)
August 2022: Part II of Muhammad ibn Daniyal’s Al Mutayyam, translated from the Arabic (with a special guest return appearance by Prof. Li Guo!)
October 2022: More selections from the Japanese Noh, including works by Zeami and Komparu Zenchiku
November 2022: Still more selections from the Japanese Noh, including works by Zeami and Komparu Zenchiku
December 2022: Eerste Bliscap Van Maria, translated from the Dutch
January 2023: Qin Jianfu.’s The Eastern Hall Elder Reforms a Prodigal Son, translated from Yuan Dynasty-era medieval Chinese
February 2023: A Play Concerning Saint Knud, Duke, translated from pre-Reformation Danish, plus (if time allows), the Play of the Merry Magdalen, translated from the Czech
March 2023: Rabinal Achi (Man of Rabinal), translated from the K’iche’
April 2023: SPECIAL EVENT (with thanks for funding support from the Jackman Humanities Institute and for a meeting space from the University of Toronto Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies) — an invited, lightly rehearsed staged reading of farces from the Recueil du British Museum (debuting new translations from the French by Jody Enders) and of Juan del Encina’s Eclogues (debuting new translations from the Spanish by Alexandra Atiya).