Gemma Kate Allred is currently enrolled as a doctoral researcher at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Her doctoral thesis, supervised by Professor Emma Depledge, examines how Shakespeare was marketed and sold in England focusing particularly on 1960-2020 in conversation with 1660-1720. These timeframes enable a focus on two of the most crucial and informative moments in the history of commercial theatre advertising. Her thesis draws on evidence presented in paratexts and promotional materials used to advertise Shakespeare texts in performance. These range from the prologues and epilogues that accompanied plays on page and stage during the Restoration and early eighteenth century, to playbills, posters and flyers posted on walls, to programs, webpages and social media initiatives aimed at contemporary audiences. Gemma analyses the extent to which promotional and paratextual materials shape audience expectations for given productions, and the ways in which they negotiate the perceived need to retain existing audiences whilst attracting new consumers.

Gemma is co-editor (with Erin Sullivan and Benjamin Broadribb) of Lockdown Shakespeare: New Evolutions in Performance and Adaptation (Bloomsbury: The Arden Shakespeare, 2022). The collection is 'the first in-depth analysis and sourcebook for 'Lockdown Shakespeare'. It brings together scholars of stage, screen, early modern and adaptation studies to examine the work that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic and considers issues of form, liveness, reception, presence and community' (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/lockdown-shakespeare-9781350247802/).

She also co-edits ‘Action is eloquence’: (Re)thinking Shakespeare, a blog looking at modern performance, adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare on stage, screen and beyond https://medium.com/action-is-eloquence-re-thinking-shakespeare #RethinkingShax

Monographs and Edited Collections

Lockdown Shakespeare: New Evolutions in Performance and Adaptation, ed. with Benjamin Broadribb and Erin Sullivan (Bloomsbury: The Arden Shakespeare, 2022).

Articles and Book Chapters

‘Who’s there?’ Britain’s twenty-first century obsession with celebrity Hamlet (2008-2018)’, Shakespeare Survey 73 (2020), 184-282.  The article considers the Benedict Cumberbatch, Jude Law, David Tennant, and Andrew Scott Hamlets, with particular focus in the marketing of those production to new rather than established audiences.

She is currently working on a chapter for Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Emilia: A Companion Reader. The chapter, titled, ‘#IAmEmilia: How Marketing Created a Movement’ will consider how the marketing of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Emilia acted not only to sell a theatre production, but also to create a movement, a feminist call to arms.

Gemma has presented at the British Graduate Shakespeare Conference at the Shakespeare Institute, with a paper titled – ‘Selling Shakespeare: The Role of the Poster in Theatre Marketing’, for which she was awarded the Liz Ketterer Trust Travel Bursary.

Forthcoming conferences include: Shakespeare Association of America, British Shakespeare Association, Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies, and Association of Adaptation Studies.

Gemma is the co-editor and contributor for, ‘Action is Eloquence: (Re)Thinking Shakespeare’ a blog looking at modern performance, adaptation, and appropriation of Shakespeare on stage, screen and beyond (https://medium.com/action-is-eloquence-re-thinking-shakespeare ).

Gemma has taught the undergraduate Literature and Writing Workshops module at the Université de Neuchâtel and presented a guest lecture on Hamlet in performance for the Introduction to Literature in English Module.

From Spring 2021 Gemma will be teaching an undergraduate seminar course at Université de Fribourg on Shakespeare and Performance.