Attend the Tale

THIS EVENT HAS TAKEN PLACE

Saturday 31st May 2008
Centre for Innovation in Performing Arts, University of Lincoln

New Contexts for Sweeny Todd

Text copied from University of Lincoln.

In the light of Tim Burton's recent film of the Sondheim and Wheeler musical of Sweeney Todd, the musical's continued popularity in amateur and professional theatre, and the continued proliferation of the Todd legend into television, film, and other literary and performance media, the longstanding and multivalent appeal of the story is worthy of renewed attention.

This one-day symposium at the University of Lincoln aims to bring together students and scholars interested in the afterlives of the Sweeney story, and its relationship to other 'Victorian criminalities' from fact and fiction and everywhere in between; from the Victorians' own theories of crime to twentieth and twenty-first century interpretations.

The symposium begins with keynote speeches from Professor Peter Thomson (University of Exeter) and Professor Richard Hand (University of Glamorgan), and culminates in an evening performance of George Dibden-Pitt's 1847 melodrama, Sweeney Todd, performed in a fresh and compelling new production by University of Lincoln undergraduates. We hope that the symposium will allow the students to enter into a dialogue with Sweeney and melodrama experts, and that it

will provoke fresh insights into the contemporary performance of melodrama. The symposium has been made possible by the generous support of the Society for Theatre Research, and the performance of Didben-Pitt's Sweeney Todd is supported by a grant from UROS, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Scheme. The symposium will also form the basis of a special edition of the scholarly journal Neo-Victorian Studies to be published later this year, entitled "Swing your razor high: Sweeney Todd and Other (Neo-) Victorian Criminalities".