April 26, 2013
4:30 pmto5:30 pm

On the afternoon of Friday 26th April I’ll be appearing at the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival alongside Professor Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to discuss the works and lives of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Those of you thinking this might turn into a bun flight will be happy to know tea and cake are included in the ticket price.

Details and ticket booking here: http://www.stratfordliteraryfestival.co.uk/event/shakespeare-and-marlowe

Written on March 13th, 2013 , Events, Literature Festivals, Marlowe
September 30, 2012
11:00 amto1:00 pm

The Rose Theatre, Bankside, LondonThe Marlowe Papers – London reading

On Sunday Sept 30th, Ros Barber will read from and talk about The Marlowe Papers.  The event will be held in the wonderful historic setting of the excavated footings of the original Rose Theatre, not far from The Globe on the south bank of the Thames.  Ros will read from The Marlowe Papers and talk about her re-imagined life of the Elizabethan poet and playwright.

This is the only reading in London this year since the sell-out launch event at the British Library in May.  Critically acclaimed verse novel The Marlowe Papers, written entirely in iambic pentameter, was joint winner of the Hoffmann Prize 2011.  Described as  ’a striking performer of her own poems’, this promises to be a powerful reading in the spot where Kit Marlowe’s plays were first performed in London and is not to be missed.

“This is the most complete Marlowe I’ve ever encountered.” – Will Self

“Ros Barber’s work is exquisitely honed in meter and metaphor — she makes the iambic pentameter sound as if she just invented it.  Her voice is an instrument of creativity, intellect and emotion. Her performance at Pure Poetry was one of the most memorable I have seen in fifteen years.” – Patience Agbabi

“Wonderful poetry, incorporating fantastic imagery, and an accomplished direct stage manner.” -  John Agard

“Ros Barber doesn’t read so much as put her whole personal, emotional creativity into sharing her words. From the outset the audience were transfixed. For me, it was a whole new experience in the immediacy of a creative mind connecting with people.” –  Andrew Fitch, “Booktalk”

Organised by The Marlowe Society: contact them for details/tickets.

Sunday 30th September

11am

Written on June 22nd, 2012 , Events, Marlowe, Poetry Readings, The Marlowe Papers
October 1, 2011
6:00 pmto7:00 pm

Saturday 1st October
Forest Row Festival
Venue: Garden Room, Community Centre
Time: 6-7pm
Cost: £3/£2.50

At this event, Ros will be giving a sneak preview of ‘The Marlowe Papers’, a fictional autobiography of the 16th century playwright Christopher Marlowe, due to be published by Sceptre in 2012. As the Forest Row Festival states, “This promises to be a particularly special literary highlight and not to be missed.”

Go to the Forest Row Festival website for details of how to get to the venue.

Written on September 19th, 2011 , Events, Marlowe, Poetry Readings Tags: ,

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvtwRgwmlIM

During the fifty years from its writing to the closure of the theatres in 1642, there was no play more popular than Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.  No Shakespeare play could compete with it. No play of the period was more often revived, or proved more consistent box office.  This season’s spectacular production of  Doctor Faustus at The Globe helps you understand why.  Spectacular, you ask?  Have I not seen the mixed reviews?  Indeed I have, and I was prepared to be disappointed.  I can only conclude that the authors of one or two sniffy reviews in the broadsheets got the posh seats (too distant from the action) and were expecting this tragicomic confection to come out a shade darker.

Marlowe, deeply scholarly and fascinated by questions of theology, nevertheless understood theatre like no other dramatist of his era, and in Doctor Faustus, fused depth and spectacle into the most profound theatrical magic.     The magic of this production – in a play centred on the pursuit of magic – is most magnificently experienced as a groundling, where misdirection combined with a more limited perspective means the ample use of trapdoors is easily missed.  We are as shocked as Faustus to find Mephistopheles calmly standing at the front of a stage that was previously empty.

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Written on July 28th, 2011 , Marlowe, Reviews

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Ros Barber

Novelist, poet, scholar