‘Beware the Cat’ – Reader in Fine Art Penny McCarthy featuring as part of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind
“With colleagues from the School of English at Sheffield University and Sussex University, I have been working on a research collaboration to create a piece of theatre based on William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat (c. 1552).
We will be presenting the first performance at Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind in autumn 2018. Beware the Cat was written in the midst of religious controversy, by an author based in the bustling print shops of Reformation London. Centred on the grisly alchemical experiments of a garrulous priest seeking to understand the language of cats, it has been called the first English novel and has never before been staged. You can read the original here.
Cat walking
The performance combines my ink and brush paintings as projections with readings, song, music and written text that respond to Baldwin’s atmospheric, witty imagery. Look out for images from Beware the Cat as they appear citywide as projections during the festival.
Cat portrait
This collaboration brings together a unique combination of researchers and experts from the fields of contemporary theatre, adaptation studies, fine art, animal studies, linguistics, and early modern studies: Rachel Stenner, Frances Babbage, Terry O’Connor, Bill McDonnell, Bob McKay and Robyn Orfitelli.”
Beware the Cat takes place on Saturday 22 September 2018, 5PM – 6PM in the Spiegeltent in Barker’s Pool, Sheffield.
Seating is unreserved and entrance is free!
Penny McCarthy is a Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University. Find out more about her work here.
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