Shakespeare Unlimited podcast
William Shakespeare and his works are woven throughout our global culture, from theater, music, and films to new scholarship, education, amazing discoveries, and more. In our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, Shakespeare opens a window into topics ranging from the American West, to the real history of Elizabethan street fighting, to interviews with Shakespearean stars. As you’ll hear, he turns up in surprising places, too—including outer space. Join us for a “no limits” tour of the connections between Shakespeare, his works, and our world.
Cutting Plays for Performance, with Aili Huber
It might surprise you to learn that just about every production of a Shakespeare play that you’ve ever seen onstage has been cut. Cutting Plays for Performance: A Practical and Accessible Guide by Aili Huber and Dr. Toby Malone, lays out how a good cut can reveal a new and exciting story.
J.R. Thorp on Learwife
A banished queen receives word that her husband and three daughters are dead. Learwife, a new novel by J.R. Thorp, picks up where Shakespeare’s King Lear leaves off: The queen is Berte, Lear’s wife, and she has been exiled in an abbey for the past fifteen years.
Lena Cowen Orlin on The Private Life of William Shakespeare
The Private Life of Shakespeare focuses on five much-talked-about elements of Shakespeare’s life, from his relationship with Anne Hathaway to his funerary monument in Stratford, laying out fact after fact drawn from primary resources.
Holidays in Shakespeare's England, with Erika T. Lin
Some holidays from early modern England, like Christmas and Easter, are still big dates on today’s calendars, while others, like Martlemas, Shrovetide, and Midsummer are less familiar. Dr. Erika T. Lin shares how people celebrated and how they might have felt about Shakespeare’s plays.
Bringing Latinx Voices to Shakespeare, with Cynthia Santos DeCure and Micha Espinosa
Cynthia Santos DeCure and Micha Espinosa, both vocal coaches and actors, grew up speaking Spanish and English. They share how important it is for actors to bring their voces culturales to Shakespeare’s words.
Shakespeare's Language and Race, with Patricia Akhimie and Carol Mejia LaPerle
Dr. Patricia Akhimie and Dr. Carol Mejia LaPerle explore the ways that Shakespeare’s language—think descriptors like “fair,” “sooty,” and “alabaster”—constructs and enshrines systems of race and racism.
Shakespeare in Latinx Communities, with José Cruz González and David Lozano
Theater artists José Cruz González and David Lozano, authors of “On Making Shakespeare Relevant to Latinx Communities” in the book Shakespeare and Latinidad, talk with us about adapting and translating Shakespeare and working to carve out a space for Latinx voices.
Shakespeare and the British Royal Family, with Gordon McMullan
Shakespeare wrote a lot about English kings and queens. Over the last three hundred years, a lot of English kings and queens have gotten really into Shakespeare.
Mike Lew on Teenage Dick
In Mike Lew’s play Teenage Dick, Richard, a high-school senior with cerebral palsy, is determined to become class president by any means necessary. Lew talks about the play’s origins, tropes around disability, and how his story reframes Richard’s motivations.
Mona Awad on All's Well
In her new novel, All’s Well, author Mona Awad combines elements of All’s Well That Ends Well, Macbeth, and the 1999 movie Election to tell the story of Miranda Fitch, a theater professor with a mutinous cast and excruciating chronic pain.
How We Hear Shakespeare's Plays, with Carla Della Gatta
In Shakespeare’s time, people talked about going to hear a play and going to see one in equal measure. Carla Della Gatta’s study of Spanish-language or bilingual Shakespeare productions has led her to think a lot about the act of listening to a play.
The Restoration Reinvention of Shakespeare
During the Restoration, theater came back to life after being outlawed by the Puritans for 18 years. With no new plays, producers turned to Shakespeare—but with some pretty big changes to keep up with the times.