ABSTRACT
New technology and digital media are, as Smith's comments suggest, forcing the debate about lone scholarship and collaborative pedagogy into the realm of performance-based teaching, a technique that has long been recognized by US and UK educators as an intrinsic strategy for introducing Shakespeare to the young and uninitiated. The improvisational flexibility and collaborative adventurism upon which the World Shakespeare Project (WSP) model relies fulfills some, if not all, of Smith's clarion call for stimulating experimentation in and out of the college classroom. Co-directed initially by Sheila T. Cavanagh in Atlanta and Kevin A. Quarmby in London, the WSP electronically connects international faculty and students in order to create and sustain hitherto unimagined collaborative dialogues and educational opportunities. Collaborative partnerships, however, require significant personal interaction in order to thrive. The WSP remains focused on its primary goal: to illuminate textual variety and performativity of Shakespearean drama, while stretching boundaries of electronic Shakespeare collaboration on a worldwide Web-based scale.
