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.
Lisa Klein on Ophelia
Have you ever wanted to know more about Ophelia? Lisa Klein’s YA novel Ophelia (and movie) approaches the events of Hamlet from Ophelia’s point of view, suggesting what might happen to her between and beyond the lines of Shakespeare’s play.
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.…
Acting, Emotion, and Science on Shakespeare's Stage
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 116 How do actors do what they do? How do they stir up emotions, both in themselves and in us as we watch them? Joseph Roach’s 1985 book The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting…
Simon Mayo: "Mad Blood Stirring"
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 115 In a novel just released in the US, author and longtime BBC radio host Simon Mayo tells an amazing—but true—story: that England’s first all-black production of Romeo and Juliet was staged by Black American prisoners of…
The Actor and the Assassin: Edwin and John Wilkes Booth
The Booths’ story is like one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, with an unstable father, a rivalry between brothers, and an ending that changes the course of history.
Duke Ellington, Shakespeare, and Such Sweet Thunder, with Douglas Lanier
In 1956, Duke Ellington gave a series of concerts at Canada’s Stratford Festival. Afterward, festival staff asked if he’d consider writing a piece about Shakespeare. A year later, Ellington premiered and recorded Such Sweet Thunder, a suite of twelve tunes inspired by the Bard and his characters.