Notelets of Filth: A Companion Reader to MLM’s Emilia

This collection of short, accessible essays serves as a supplementary text to Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s play, Emilia.

Critically acclaimed and beloved by audiences, this innovative and ground-breaking show is a speculative history, an imaginative (re)telling of the life of English Renaissance poet Aemilia Bassano Lanyer. This book features essays by theatre practitioners, activists, and scholars and informed by intersectional feminist, critical race, queer, and postcolonial analyses will enable students and their teachers across secondary school and higher education to consider the play’s major themes from a wide variety of theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives. This volume explores the current events and cultural contexts that informed the writing and performing of Emilia between 2017 and 2019, various aspects of the professional London productions, critical and audience responses, and best practices for teaching the play to university and secondary school students. It includes a foreword by Emilia playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre, arts activism, feminist literature, and theory.

Laura Kressly (she/her) is a theatre critic, dramaturg, and director. She is co-founder of the Network of Independent Critics. She is currently working on her PhD at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she is also a Visiting Lecturer.

Aida Patient (she/her) teaches women’s writing in the Department of English, Languages, and Cultures at Mount Royal University in Canada.

Kimberly A. Williams (she/her) is a teacher, scholar, and activist. She directs the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Mount Royal University in Canada.