Shakespeare and Performance Studies:A Dialogue Susan Bennett and Gina Bloom The collaboration that led to this special issue began in 2013, when we happened to meet up at the PSi (Performance Studies International) conference at Stanford University and were struck by the realization that we were among the very few attendees who were also members of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA). Why was there so little crossover between these organizations? One reason is that SAA and PSi, and the disciplines they represent, have little overlap in terms of historical focus: Shakespeare Studies is primarily focused on the early modern period, while Performance Studies is largely uninterested in much before 1968. The disjunction between the two fields stems also from their histories of development. As W. B. Worthen points out, Shakespeare Studies was "constructed through centuries of textual scholarship and interpretation" whereas Performance Studies has been "engrained with a disciplinary suspicion of the regulatory work attributed to writing, textuality, and the archive in performance, and so perhaps constitutively dismissive of dramatic theatre" (2). To be sure, there have been exceptions to these rules in both the SAA and PSi conference programs, but we found it odd, given our shared interests in Shakespeare and in Performance Studies theory, that these worlds seemed to be missing opportunities for exchange and engagement. That conversation led to our decision to co-lead a seminar at the SAA conference in 2016 that would bring the two fields into a more sustained and focused dialogue. As it turned out, Shakespeareans were [End Page 367] even more eager than we had suspected to bring theories of performance into their research on Shakespeare: there was so much demand for the seminar that we ran double sessions. The presentations and conversations in those two conference sessions form the origin and inspiration for this special issue of Shakespeare Bulletin. We were encouraged not just by the large number of proposals that the topic of "Shakespeare and Performance Studies: A Dialogue" received, but just as much by the enthusiasm of auditors, many of whom were quick to join in our debate. Clearly, then, there was (and is) a need and readiness in Shakespeare Studies for a deeper engagement with theories of performance. This derives, at least in part, from the sometimes slow, but certainly steady, growth in interest in performance matters within the field of Shakespeare Studies. Over the last twenty to thirty years, performance has moved, definitively, from a marginal subfield to a robust and diverse set of interests and approaches that impacts many critical nodes from the production of texts to the material conditions of early modern theaters. Moves that considered the text as the blueprint for performance and, even, tested editing practices through performance significantly changed the ways that editions of Shakespeare's plays are made and used. For instance, the New Cambridge Shakespeare series advertises its distinctive emphasis on performance, noting that "precise details of staging and performance help students visualise the plays in action" ("About NCS"). As well, a recent issue of Shakespeare Bulletin (34.1, Spring 2016), guest edited by C. K. Ash, José A. Pérez Díez, and Emma Smith, looked to invigorate conversation about "the relationship between page and stage from the position of the text-producer" (Introduction 2). Parallel to developments that opened up textual study to a variety of issues concerned with performance, other scholarly work has been attentive to the period's theater history as well as concerns of theater archaeology—the latter stimulated, on the one hand, by the threat to the remains of the Rose Theatre in 1989 when a new building was planned for its site and, on the other, in the project for a replica Globe Theatre, initiated by Sam Wanamaker and eventually opened on London's South-bank in 1997. Other emergent strands of performance criticism within Shakespeare Studies have looked to imagine the production and reception of early modern performances, merging aspects of theater history (for example, knowledge of particular actors and their signature skills) with close readings that focused on releasing the text's performance potentials. Moreover, interest in performance across Shakespeare studies has extended beyond a focus on early modern...