Susanna Soundscape
Soundscape created for the Susanna Hall project
Immerse yourself in a soundscape of Susanna’s world – recordings within Hall’s Croft, its garden and at Anne Hathaway’s Cottage undulate with voices singing the ballads Susanna could have heard in her day-to-day life. A voice, perhaps it is Susanna, reads, thinks and acts on the writing of early modern women, including Amelia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, Dorothy Leigh – and the anonymous ‘receipts’ (recipes) for easing women’s health. A new poem responds to these women’s words.
Free to listen wherever you are, meet early modern women and their world…
Feel free to play this while viewing the calm, silent video created in Hall’s Croft Garden LINK or while you explore the Hall’s Croft spatial archive or augmented reality exhibition, Susanna’s Cabinet.
All our Susanna project outputs are completely free to access, thanks to our funding from the AHRC - and requiring no sign-in or data.
Creating this soundscape involved establishing a balance between on-location recordings at Hall's Croft and Anne Hathaway's Cottage, studio-created sound design, specially-recorded music of the period, and spoken word performances informed by research into Susanna Hall's life. I incorporated the concept of cycles into the work, with many of the different meanings that word suggests - there is a cyclical quality to the soundscape, reflecting the four seasons, with an almost processional quality to how - for each season - outdoor recordings are followed by more intimate indoor recordings, music followed by spoken word. Sonically, I really tried to conjure up the Stratford that Susanna would have known, devoid of the sonic innovations of the intervening 400 years.
— Iain Chambers, Composer
Meet the creative team
Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson – Project lead, original concept, Script
Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson is Principal Lecturer in Literature at the University of Brighton. Her research is interdisciplinary, as a literary historian and focusing across Shakespeare and early modern English literature and their afterlives in 20th and 21st century contexts, and memory studies (particularly early modern women, literary commemoration and heritage presentation). Having completed her PhD in Shakespeare Studies at University of Bristol in 2009, Ailsa held a post at King’s College London before being named the National Theatre’s first Academic Associate. Her books include Shakespeare, Cinema, Counterculture (2016, Routledge), The Shakespeare Hut (2019, The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury) and, with Kate Aughterson, a co-authored research-led textbook Shakespeare and Gender (2020, The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2022, in recognition of her contribution to historical research.
Lucy Phelps – Script, Actor
Lucy has starred at Stratford as Rosalind in As You Like It (RSC, 2019) and as Isabella in Measure For Measure (RSC, 2019) and at Shakespeare’s Globe as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (2022). Trained at LAMDA, Lucy has has performed at the Tricycle Theatre, the Globe and the Royal Court, as well at LAMDA's in house theatre. Prior to attending LAMDA, Lucy gained a Double Starred First in French and Spanish from the University of Exeter. Working prolifically in both theatre and televsision, Lucy is also a writer and translator, specialising in playtexts.
Iain Chambers - Composer
Iain Chambers is an award-winning sound artist, composer and producer working across sound art, podcasts, radio and commercial music. His work often uses field recordings and specific locations as compositional material. Iain is a founder member of multiple music groups, including the pioneering British electronic music composers/performers Langham Research Centre; Rubbish Music, a duo with Kate Carr creating new sound-worlds from discarded objects; and the Anglo-Dutch pop trio Render Ghosts. In 2019 Iain launched the independent record label Persistence of Sound, presenting new musique concrète and field recordings. Between 2015-2019 Iain staged the first ever concerts inside Tower Bridge's cavernous Bascule Chambers, transforming London’s iconic structure into a giant musical instrument and music venue.
www.iainchambers.com
Jen Waghorn – singer
Jennifer has produced a number of online Shakespeare resources, including three Shakespeare-focused online learning courses (MOOCs) and a digital exhibition on Shakespeare and music. Her doctoral thesis examined the original surviving music of Shakespeare’s theatre company from 1609-25. She has advised on music history for the Royal Shakespeare Company since 2018, and has worked with the Historical Dance Society on reconstructing Jacobean court masques. She has provided edited music and commentaries for critical editions of John Fletcher’s Love’s Cure, Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The False One, and Ben Jonson’s Volpone. She is also a theatre composer, musician and musical director; she has written and performed music for around thirty productions (mostly Shakespeare) with various theatre companies, including a musical reimagining of Twelfth Night for the Arcola Theatre.
Project funded by AHRC (part of UKRI)
