Rate My Professor Tim Fitzpatrick

Fitzpatrick's research focuses on the interplay between playtexts and performance staging in early modern English drama, with particular attention to the spatial implications, entrance and exit patterns, stage resources, and architectural constraints of Elizabethan and Jacobean public playhouses. He examines how Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights inscribed performance conditions into their texts, adhering to generic conventions of theatrical place across companies. Key publications include his book Playwright, Space and Place in Early Modern Performance: Shakespeare and Company (2011), which analyzes spatial dynamics in early modern plays; articles such as 'The Two Doors' Traffic of Our Stage': Developing and Testing 'Spatial' Readings (2015), Shakespeare's Staged Spaces and Playgoers’ Perceptions (2015), From Archaeological Remains to Onion Dome: At the Upper Limits of Speculation (2011), Stage Management, Dramaturgy and Spatial Semiotics in Shakespeare's Dialogue (1999), and Shakespeare's Exploitation of a Two-Door Stage: Macbeth (1995). He also edited the Theatre as Performance series. In collaboration with Russell Emerson, Fitzpatrick developed a geometrically precise model of Shakespeare's second Globe playhouse (1614) using computer-aided design, archaeological evidence, and a contemporary sketch, revealing a smaller structure with two stage entrances. This research informed the Popup Globe, a full-scale reconstruction in Auckland in 2016 for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, advancing scholarly and practical understandings of early modern staging.