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.
Iqbal Khan
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 128 “If, with Shakespeare, we can thrill and tease an audience into embracing unknowing, that is one of the most important gifts that we can give,” says director Iqbal Khan. Khan has directed at Shakespeare’s Globe, in…
Shakespeare and Opera, with Colleen Fay
It’s not easy to turn a Shakespeare play into an opera, says Colleen Fay. Too many words, too many characters, and too many plots. But sometimes, when it all comes together, a great opera can bring the essence of Shakespeare’s stories sharply into focus.
If Shakespeare Wrote Mean Girls
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 126 What would it be like if Shakespeare had written Mean Girls? How about Back to the Future? In 2013, Quirk Books began releasing a series of books by Ian Doescher that reimagined the Star Wars films as…
Andrew McConnell Stott on the Shakespeare Jubilee
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 125 David Garrick’s 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford-on-Avon was like an 18th-century Fyre Festival. From overcrowding to pouring rains, the event was a disaster. Yet the Jubilee made Shakespeare a national hero and put his hometown on…
Lisa Klein on Ophelia
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 124 Have you ever wanted to know more about Ophelia? What does she think about the events at Elsinore? What is her relationship to Hamlet? Whose account of her death should we believe? Shakespeare’s Hamlet leaves lots…
Casey Wilder Mott and Fran Kranz on their LA Midsummer
Shakespeare Unlimited Episode 123 Director Casey Wilder Mott’s 2017 film adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream sets Shakespeare’s story in modern Los Angeles, where aspiring filmmakers, eccentric artists, studio execs, and surfers bounce off one another in a riot of…
The Gender Politics of Kiss Me, Kate
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 122 A new production of Kiss Me, Kate is on Broadway now. It features Cole Porter’s memorable music and Kelli O’Hara and Will Chase as Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham, a bickering divorced couple thrown together when…
Glenda Jackson
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 121 The great Glenda Jackson is back on the stage. In 1992, the Emmy and two-time Academy Award winner was elected to Parliament. She spent the next 23 years in Britain’s House of Commons. Since returning to…
Michael Kahn
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 120 You can learn a lot about Shakespeare, and how we perform his plays, by talking with Michael Kahn. Kahn has directed Off-Off-Broadway, Off-Broadway, and on Broadway. He directed Measure for Measure for Joe Papp’s Shakespeare in…
Hamlet 360: Virtual Reality Shakespeare
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 119 You don’t need a ticket to see the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s most recent production of Hamlet. You don’t even need to leave your house. All you need is a virtual reality device. Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s…
Harriet Walter
In 2012, London’s Donmar Warehouse opened an all-female production of Julius Caesar, starring Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus and directed by Tony Award-nominated director Phyllida Lloyd. The production was set in a women’s prison, and it was the first of a trilogy of all-female productions, all starring Walter, that The Guardian would call “one of the most important theatrical events of the past 20 years.”
Deborah Harkness: A Discovery of Witches
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 117 In 1994, Deborah Harkness was doing research at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library when she stumbled across the Book of Soyga, a long-lost manuscript treatise on magic that once belonged to Elizabethan scientist and occult philosopher John Dee.…