Dr Ben Schofield is Reader in German Studies and Director of the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture, King’s College London. Ben’s research focusses on German Studies, Transnational Studies, and Comparative Cultural Studies across the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries. He is the editor of Transnational German Studies (with Rebecca Braun), and German in the World (with James Hodkinson) and is the author of Private Lives and Collective Destinies: Class, Nation and the Folk in Gustav Freytag (2012), and The Tradition of the Bestseller (2012, with Charlotte Woodford). His work on theatre and performance focuses in particular on contemporary German theatre practice and theory and its global reception; Shakespeare and German Theatre (contemporary and historical); and figures such as Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Ostermeier, and Julian Rosenfeldt.
Theatre and Performance Publications
Theatre Without Borders? Tracing the Transnational Value of German Theatre Beyond Germany: A UK Case Study. Schofield, B. K., Jul 2019, (Submitted) German in the World. A Culture in National, Transnational and Global Contexts. Schofield, B. & Hodkinson, J. (eds.). New York: Camden House
Shakespeare Beyond the Trenches. The German Myth of “unser Shakespeare” in Transnational Perspective. Schofield, B. K., Oct 2018, Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance. Mancewicz, A. & Huang, A. (eds.). London: Palgrave Macmillan
‘Liveness’, Schofield, B. K., Mar 2018, (Submitted) Transnational Modern Languages: A Handbook Burns, J. & Duncan, D. (eds.). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, (Transnational Modern Languages)
‘Germany and the Euro-Crisis: The Bremer Shakespeare Company’s Timon aus Athen’, Schofield, B. & Farr, J., 2013, Shakespeare Beyond English: A Global Experiment. Carson, C. & Bennett, S. (eds.). Cambridge University Press, p. 287-291 4 p.
‘Timon aus Athen / Timon of Athens: Bremer Shakespeare Company (Shakespeare’s Globe Blog)’, Schofield, B. & Farr, J., 2012
‘Emil’s Berlin: A City of Promise and Threat’, Schofield, B. K., Nov 2013, Emil and the Detectives: National Theatre Programme
Performances and Artistic Collaborations
In 2012, Ben was the Globe Theatre Ambassador for Germany as part of the Globe to Globe Festival, itself part of the World Shakespeare Festival and the Cultural Olympiad 2012. In this role, he worked on generating new audiences for German theatre for the Globe.
He wrote the Programme Notes for the National Theatre’s production of Emil and the Detectives. He held the opening and closing talks for the Weimar Culture section of The Rest is Noise festival at the Southbank Centre.
With Lara Feigel, he runs the annual Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment, which awards experiment in different cultural forms, including theatre and performance.