What theater makers learned from 2020
We asked some of our Shakespeare theater partners what the events of 2020 had illuminated for them about Shakespeare and theater.
Where to watch Shakespeare in November
Shakespeare companies have lots of creative programs happening this month both online and in-person. Here’s what the Folger’s theater partners are up to this November.
Where to Watch Shakespeare in October
There are a ton of places to watch Shakespeare in October, both online and in-person. Here’s what the Folger’s theater partners are up to this month.
Strange Shakespeare: Macbeth and the even weirder sisters
Shakespeare’s witches haven’t always terrified audiences. For a century and more – from the late 17th to the early 19th centuries – actors played these parts for laughs. During the period in which Shakespeare became “the Bard”, the witches in…
“In the brave squares”: The Show Must Go Online
One of the lasting achievements of the extended COVID quarantine will surely be an extraordinary archive of the complete works of William Shakespeare performed on Zoom by casts from around the world, under the umbrella title The Show Must Go…
Strange Shakespeare: Transforming ‘The Tempest’, classifying Caliban
Shakespeare became the Bard of Avon, the English national poet, in the roughly two hundred years following his death in 1616. During this period, his plays were constantly staged in theaters throughout the British Isles and their colonies—but often in…
Where to find Shakespeare in September
Check out a mix of innovative online programming and safely socially-distanced in-person performances from Shakespeare companies across the US.
Shakespeare travesties, the philosophical and the popular
There are philosophical travesties, which use absurdity to further explore the ideas Shakespeare raised in his plays. And there are popular travesties, which are substantially less faithful to Shakespeare’s original, trafficking in the most well-known touchstones of the plays. Explore…
And so they play their parts: Double-casting Shakespeare’s plays
Double-casting is a theater technique (as opposed to a literary one) that creates a meta-narrative, transforming a large-cast play into a present-tense adventure. Actors swapping costumes and changing roles (and sometimes genders) becomes part of the thrilling ride, and theater’s…
William Charles Macready and the restoration of William Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’
Imagine a King Lear that cut the character of the Fool, created a romance between Edgar and Cordelia, and featured a happy ending in which Lear and Cordelia both live. That was the most popular version of Shakespeare’s play for…
BECOMING OTHELLO! A gender-flipped journey onstage and in the archive
Debra Ann Byrd writes about encountering an early female Othello in the Folger collection and developing her memoir and solo show, Becoming Othello.
The irony of the American Moor
‘American Moor’ playwright and actor Keith Hamilton Cobb writes about speaking back to Shakespeare, White American Theater, and frameworks of privilege.