Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Between 1821 and 1960, it would have been vanishingly rare to see a Black woman onstage performing Shakespeare. In Dr. Joyce Green MacDonald’s chapter in the new Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race, “Actresses of Color and Shakespearean Performance,” she digs deep into the history of American professional theater in the United States to find records of every Black woman who has been paid to perform or recite Shakespeare on stage in the United States. Barbara Bogaev talks with MacDonald about four performers who took to the stage in those 139 years: The African Grove Theatre’s “Miss Welsh,” Henrietta Vinton Davis, Adrienne McNeil Herndon, and Jane White. Dr. Joyce Green MacDonald is an Associate Professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky and a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. In 2011, she participated in the Folger Institute conference “An Anglo-American History of the KJV.” MacDonald’s new book, Shakespearean Adaptation, Race, and Memory i

It might surprise you to learn that just about every production of a Shakespeare play that you’ve ever seen onstage has been cut, from student shows to Broadway revivals. Cutting Plays for Performance: A Practical and Accessible Guide, a new book by Aili Huber and Dr. Toby Malone, lays out some of the reasons that theater-makers cut Shakespeare’s plays, and suggests some handy questions directors and dramaturgs should ask themselves as they take a pen to the plays. Barbara Bogaev interviews Huber about the argument that brought Huber and her co-author together, strategies for cutting plays, and how a good cut can reveal a new and exciting story. Aili Huber has been a theater director for over 20 years. She holds an MFA in directing from Mary Baldwin University and the American Shakespeare Center. Her new book, co-written with Dr. Toby Malone of SUNY-Oswego, is called Cutting Plays for Performance: A Practical and Accessible Guide. It was published by Routledge in December 2021. From the Shakespeare Unlimit

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 Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia’s mother, and she has been exiled in an abbey for the past fifteen years. Now, newly informed of her family members’ deaths, she remembers her life with them and tries to plot her way forward. Thorp talks with Barbara Bogaev about her inspirations (including Eleanor of Aquitaine, The English Patient, and a stray line from an Agatha Christie novel), her new backstories for Lear’s characters, and the roles of grief and nothingness in the book. J.R. Thorp is a librettist and writer working across a variety of forms, primarily with composers, choirs, orchestras, and musical organizations. Learwife is her first novel. It was published in the US by Pegasus Books in December 2021. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published January 4, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights

Dr. Lena Cowen Orlin’s new book, The Private Life of Shakespeare, isn’t exactly a biography. Rather, it’s an exhaustive return to the primary sources that document Shakespeare’s life, a book that scholar James Shapiro says “demolishes shoddy claims and biased inferences that have distorted our understanding of Shakespeare’s life.” Orlin focuses on five much-talked-about elements of Shakespeare’s life, and then lays out fact after fact after fact about them drawn from her assiduous research. We talk with her about a few of those elements, including Shakespeare’s relationship with Anne Shakespeare, how he escaped an apprenticeship and career in Stratford-upon-Avon, and his funerary monument in Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church. Orlin is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Lena Cowen Orlin is an Emerita Professor of English at Georgetown University. From 1982 to 1996, Orlin coordinated postdoctoral seminars and conferences as Executive Director of the Folger Institute. In 2011 and 2012, she researched at the Folge

Sir Antony Sher, one the greatest Shakespearean actors of the 20th and 21st centuries, died last week in Stratford Upon Avon. He was 72. In 2018, we were lucky enough to record an interview with Sir Antony and, to honor his life and work, we’re bringing it to you again. What does it take to be a great Shakespearean? For Sher, the answer was preparation. On this podcast episode, Sher talks about his experiences with the Royal Shakespeare Company and his roles as Lear in 2016, Falstaff in 2014, and Richard III in 1984. In preparing for these roles, Sher kept meticulous diaries, which he later published as books. There was 'Year of the King' for Richard and 'Year of the Fat Knight' for Falstaff. Then, there was 'Year of the Mad King,' published by Nick Hern books in 2018, which chronicles his doubts, his fears, his marriage proposal, his illnesses, and all of the life and death that swirled around him as he prepared for the most grueling role Shakespeare ever wrote for an older actor: King Lear. Sher is intervi

Many of us have holiday traditions: we trim trees, spin dreidels, trick-or-treat, set off fireworks, and host parties. People had holiday traditions in Shakespeare’s time too: they crossdressed, roleplayed, acted in amateur theatricals, fought, ate pancakes, and watched cockfights. If you’re thinking some of those holiday traditions sound familiar from Shakespeare’s plays… well, you’re right. Dr. Erika T. Lin studies holidays in early modern England. Some of them, like Christmas and Easter, are still big dates on today’s calendars, while others, like Martlemas, Shrovetide, Midsummer, or The May, are less familiar. Lin talks with Barbara Bogaev about how people celebrated and how they might have felt about Shakespeare’s plays in a period when the line between holiday festivity and theater wasn’t quite so clear. Dr. Erika T. Lin is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at CUNY Graduate Center in New York. You can find her writing on Elizabethan festivals and holidays in a couple of places. Her art

Cynthia Santos DeCure and Micha Espinosa both grew up speaking English and Spanish, and they share memories of being made to feel like their voices, dialects, and identities weren’t “good enough” for Shakespeare. Now, both DeCure and Espinosa are vocal coaches and actors. They share an example of how an actor might embody their text, praise on the late great Raul Julia, and explain how important it is for actors to bring their 'voces culturales' to Shakespeare’s words. Cynthia Santos DeCure is an Assistant Professor of Acting at the Yale School of Drama. She was most recently the dialect coach for El Huracán at Yale Rep, and she was an on-set dialect coach for Orange is the New Black on Netflix. Micha Espinosa is a Professor in the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre at Arizona State University. She was the Voice and Text Director for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s world premiere production of La Comedia of Errors, a bilingual adaptation of Shakespeare’s original play from the Play on! translation by Ch

Close reading of Shakespeare is not a new concept. But this kind of close reading is more challenging—and it can help us interpret Shakespeare’s words in new and profound ways. Our guests are two contributors to the new Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race: Dr. Patricia Akhimie, who wrote a chapter on race in the comedies, and Dr. Carol Mejia LaPerle, who wrote a chapter on race in the tragedies. Together, they explore the ways that Shakespeare’s language—think descriptors like “fair,” “sooty,” or “alabaster”—constructs and enshrines systems of race and racism. Akhmie and LaPerle are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Patricia Akhimie is an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. She is a 2021 - 22 Research Fellow at the Folger. Dr. Carol Mejia LaPerle is Professor and Honors Advisor for the Department of English at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. She has participated in numerous Folger Institute scholarly programs and was a speaker at the 2019 Race and Pe

Theater artists José Cruz González and David Lozano join us in this episode. Their conversation “On Making Shakespeare Relevant to Latinx Communities” appears in the new book Shakespeare and Latinidad. González and Lozano talk with Barbara Bogaev about adapting and translating Shakespeare, performing and directing it in ways that make it relevant to Latinx audiences, and whether the Bard has a place at theater companies working to carve out a space for Latinx voices. José Cruz González received the NEA Directing Fellowship in 1985 and the 2010 Kennedy Center National Teaching Artist Grant. His plays include American Mariachi, Sunsets & Margaritas, and The Astronaut Farmworker. He’s also a professor of Theatre Arts at Cal State Los Angeles. David Lozano is Executive Artistic Director of Cara Mía Theatre in Dallas. In 2014, he was recognized by The Dallas Observer as one of six “Masterminds of Arts & Culture.” He co-wrote and directed Deferred Action and Crystal City 1969, which was named the “Best New Play

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. Our guest Gordon McMullan is the Principal Investigator of Making History: Shakespeare and the Royal Family, a new online exhibition that examines the long relationship between Shakespeare and the British royal family. That includes queens pretending to love Shakespeare as much as they thought Elizabeth I did, princes patterning themselves after Hal, and kings writing melancholy marginalia in copies of The Complete Works. McMullan is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Gordon McMullan is a Professor of English and Director of the London Shakespeare Centre at King's College London. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 28, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Say, What Art Thou That Talk'st of Kings and Queens?” was was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It

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. Commissioned by theater artist Gregg Mozgala and The Apothetae, the company Mogzala started to explore the disabled experience, Lew's comedy drops Shakespeare's "Richard III" in a modern American high school. Barbara Bogaev interview Lew about about the play’s origins, tropes around disability, and how his story reframes Richard's motivations. Teenage Dick will be onstage three times this fall and winter, in a production directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnagel: at Washington, DC's Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company September 22 – October 17, at Boston's Huntington Theater December 3 – January 9, and at California's Pasadena Playhouse February 1 – February 27. Mike Lew is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, The Mellon Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Ma-Yi Theater in New York, and the former La Jolla Playhouse Artist-in-Residence. His plays include Tiger Style!, Bike America

In her new novel, "All’s Well," author Mona Awad combines elements of Shakespeare's "All’s Well That Ends Well" and "Macbeth" and the 1999 movie "Election" to tell the story of Miranda Fitch, a theater professor with a mutinous cast of actors and excruciating chronic pain. What do those plays have in common, and how did Awad weave them together to create her darkly funny new book? She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Mona Awad is the author of three novels. "13 Ways Of Looking At A Fat Girl," published by Penguin in 2016, won the Amazon Best First Novel Award. Her 2019 novel, "Bunny," was a finalist for a GoodReads Choice Award for Best Horror. Her novel "All’s Well" was published by Simon & Schuster and Penguin Canada in August 2021. Awad has taught creative writing at Brown University, the University of Denver, Framingham State University, Tufts and in the MFA program at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published August 31, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Libr

In Shakespeare’s time, people talked about going to hear a play and going to see one in equal measure. So, what exactly do we hear when we hear one of Shakespeare’s plays? What information do we gather from its words, music, or sound effects? What if it has been adapted, updated, or translated? We ask Dr. Carla Della Gatta of Florida State University, co-editor of the new book "Shakespeare and Latinidad." Her study of Spanish-language or bilingual Shakespeare productions has led her to think a lot about the act of listening to a play. She talks to Barbara Bogaev about the ways a production of Shakespeare can challenge us to hear in new ways. Dr. Carla Della Gatta is an assistant professor of English at Florida State University. She is the author of "Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater," which will be published in 2022, and co-editor of "Shakespeare and Latinidad," released by Edinburgh University Press in June 2021. She is a past recipient of a Folger fellowship. From the Shakespeare Un

The next time someone complains about a director changing or tampering with Shakespeare… we’ve got an answer for them. The first generation of theater artists after Shakespeare weren’t particularly concerned about performing Shakespeare's plays the way they appear in the First Folio. After the English Civil War, the Puritan-led government outlawed theater for eighteen years. When Charles II ascended to the throne, in the period we now call the Restoration, theater came back to life. With no new plays, producers like William Davenant and Thomas Killigrew turned to Shakespeare… but they made some pretty big changes to keep up with the times. Restoration-era Shakespeare featured new characters, changed scripts, and grand musical interludes inspired by court masques. Dr. Richard Schoch of Queen’s University Belfast lay out this history in his new book, "A Short History of Shakespeare in Performance." We spoke with Schoch about the theater in the Restoration and what we can learn from them after our own year wi

In her play "Where We Belong," Mohegan director playwright, and performer Madeline Sayet recalls her 2015 journey to the UK to pursue the PhD in Shakespeare that she never ended up getting. The play, now available in a world premiere film adaptation produced by Woolly Mammoth Theater Company and the Folger, explains why she left the degree behind and explores what it means to belong in a complicated world. We talk to Sayet about growing up Mohegan in Connecticut and her evolving relationship with the Shakespeare today. Stream "Where We Belong," produced in association with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, on-demand through July 11. Madeline Sayet is a Mohegan theater-maker. She serves as the Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP) and Co-Artistic Director of Red Eagle Soaring: Native Youth Theatre. In addition to "Where We Belong," her plays include "Up and Down the River," "Antigone Or And Still She Must Rise Up," and "Daughters of Leda." This fall, she joins the faculty

What would we find out about you if we got to know your neighbors? What if we took a walk around the neighborhood where you live? That's the way that Geoffrey Marsh hopes to learn more about Shakespeare in his new book, Living with Shakespeare. Starting with a 1598 tax roll that lists Shakespeare's names among the residents of St. Helen's parish, the historian and director of the theater and performances collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum meets the people and explores the places that surrounded Shakespeare in the late 1590s. The people include lord mayors, an unusual concentration of doctors, and Shakespeare's saavy but combative colleague James Burbage. The places include St. Helen's Church, the Theatre, and a notable well about a hundred yard's from Shakespeare's house. Geoffrey Marsh is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Listen to Shakespeare Unlimited on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, NPR One, or wherever you get your podcasts. Geoffrey Marsh is the director of the Theat

When did the concept of race develop? How far should we look back to find the attitudes that bolster white supremacy? We ask Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy, an assistant professor of literature at Harvey Mudd College, and the author of a chapter in the monumental new Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race called “Barbarian Moors: Documenting Racial Formation in Early Modern England.” Dadabhoy takes us back to Shakespeare’s London—a more diverse city than you might have imagined—to look at the racial ideologies reflected in two plays: George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar and William Shakespeare’s Othello. Plus, we learn more about race in medieval crusade and conversion romances, and get a sense of how Dadabhoy approaches issues of race in her Shakespeare classes. Dadabhoy is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy is an assistant professor of literature at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Her chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race is called “Barbarian Moors: Document

Over 400 years after Shakespeare’s sonnets were first published in 1609, what is left to learn? "All the Sonnets of Shakespeare," a new edition of the sonnets published in 2020, takes some bold steps to help us look at the poems with new eyes. The book, co-edited by Dr. Paul Edmondson and Sir Stanley Wells, dispenses with the Sonnets’ traditional numbering and arranges them in the order in which Edmondson and Wells believe they were written. It also includes nearly thirty additional sonnets drawn from the texts of Shakespeare’s plays. As a result, the collection is a fresh take on the Sonnets, Edmondson tells us, one that dispatches with the “Fair Youth” and “Dark Lady” narrative and helps us better understand Shakespeare as a writer and thinker. Edmondson is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. The Rev. Dr. Paul Edmondson is the Head of Research and Knowledge and Director of the Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. All the Sonnets of Shakespeare is published by Cambridge Univ

Frannie Shepherd-Bates founded Shakespeare in Prison in 2012. Nine years later, SIP is the signature community program of the Detroit Public Theatre, and has worked on a total of eight plays with a women’s ensemble at Huron Valley Correctional Facility and a men’s ensemble at Parnall Correctional Facility. When one of the members of the men’s ensemble suggested that SIP should find a way to share their work to make it easier for others to approach, he inspired a new project. Shakespeare in Prison is creating a new critical edition of "Richard III" that pairs Shakespeare’s text with the perspectives of incarcerated women who worked with the play over the course of 2016 and 2017. We speak with Frannie Shepherd-Bates about SIP and the book, "Richard III—In Prison: A Critical Edition," which she says offers readers a chance to approach the play from a place of “radical empathy.” Shepherd-Bates is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Frannie Shepherd-Bates is the Director of Shakespeare in Prison for the Detroit Publ

The National Theatre’s new production of "Romeo and Juliet" was meant to premiere in the summer of 2020. But when the COVID-19 pandemic began, Simon Godwin, the production’s director, was tasked with turning it into a 90-minute film shot entirely in the National’s Littleton Theatre. Now, as the film approaches its United States premiere, Godwin sees "Romeo and Juliet" as a play uniquely suited to our pandemic moment. We spoke with him about how the pandemic affected the production logistically and thematically, as well as about learning how to direct a film and working with actors like Josh O’Connor, Jessie Buckley, and Tamsin Grieg. Godwin is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. "Romeo and Juliet" airs in the United States at 9 pm EDT on April 23—Shakespeare’s birthday—on PBS Great Performances. Simon Godwin is the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published Tuesday, April 13. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This po