Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

It’s not easy to turn a Shakespeare’s play into an opera, says Colleen Fay. They have 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. We talk to Colleen Fay about the history of Shakespearean operas… and find out which ones work and which ones don’t. Fay is a former Library of Congress music librarian and was the founding head of the Performing Arts Library at The Kennedy Center. She’s a regular on DC's local public TV arts roundup Around Town and local public radio magazine show Metro Connection. Fay is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 3, 2019. ©Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Come, Sing,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical helped from Evan Marquart at Voice Trax

In Act 3, scene 4 of Othello, Othello tells Desdemona that the handkerchief he gave her was “dyed in mummy.” What does that mean? According to Lafayette College’s Ian Smith, it means the handkerchief was dyed black. In this episode, originally broadcast in June 2016, we talk to Smith and Ayanna Thompson about Elizabethan modes of blackface—which included covering a performer’s body with dyed cloth to simulate blackness—and how Smith’s insight changes how we understand Othello. Ian Smith is a professor of English at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. When we published this episode, Ayanna Thompson was a professor of English at George Washington University. She is now Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University. Smith and Thompson are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Originally published June 14, 2016. Re-broadcast August 20, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Teach Him How To T

You probably have a mental image of the Victorian Era. Straitlaced, rigid, and repressed, right? Meet Charlotte Cushman, born 1816. She was an actor known for playing traditionally male roles, like Romeo and Hamlet. She managed her own career and demanded to be paid as much as her male counterparts. She spent her life in a series of romantic relationships with women. And she was an international superstar. She was so famous and beloved that newspapers called her by just her first name, like Madonna or Beyoncé. She was “Our Charlotte.” In this episode, originally broadcast in 2014, we talk about “Our Charlotte” and her remarkable career with Lisa Merrill, a professor in the Department of Performance Studies at Hofstra University and author of When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and her Circle of Female Spectators. Merrill is interviewed by Rebecca Sheir. From our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Originally broadcast October 22, 2014 and rebroadcast with an updated introduction August 6, 2019. © Folger Shak

What would it be like if Shakespeare had written Mean Girls? How about Back to the Future: "Be ready for audacious episodes. Whither we go we have no need of roads." In 2013, Quirk Books began releasing a series of books by Ian Doescher that reimagined the Star Wars films as if they had been written by Shakespeare, featuring iambic pentameter and all the other literary devices we associate with the Bard. Doescher has run out of Star Wars films for now, so he’s left the “galaxy far, far away” and turned his attention to two different films. Doescher’s newest books are William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Mean Girls and William Shakespeare’s Get Thee Back to the Future. We talk to Doescher about how he chooses films to adapt, his writing process, and how his kids react when he points out naturally-occurring iambic pentameter (they aren’t impressed). Ian Doescher is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published July 23, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rig

David Garrick’s 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford-on-Avon was like an 18th-century Fyre Festival. From overcrowding to pouring rain, the event was a disaster. Yet the Jubilee also revived interest in Shakespeare and put his hometown on the map. How did the Jubilee get started, how did it go wrong, and how did it end up having such an incredible impact? The University of Southern California’s Andrew McConnell Stott explores those questions and more in his new book, What Blest Genius?: The Jubilee that Made Shakespeare. Andrew McConnell Stott is a professor of English and divisional dean of undergraduate education at the University of Southern California. What Blest Genius?: The Jubilee that Made Shakespeare was published by W.W. Norton & Company in 2019. Stott was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published July 9, 2019 © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “The Rain It Raineth Every Day,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garla

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 of questions about Ophelia unanswered. That’s where Lisa Klein’s Ophelia comes in. Klein’s 2006 YA novel approaches the events of Hamlet from Ophelia’s point of view, suggesting what might happen to her between the lines and scenes of Shakespeare’s play. Now, Ophelia is a major motion picture starring Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley as Ophelia and Naomi Watts as Gertrude. On the eve of the film’s theatrical release, we talk to Lisa Klein about her book and its heroine. Klein is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 25, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, ““You Speak Like A Green Girl,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web produce

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 color and music. We talk to Mott and Fran Kranz, who co-produced the film and plays Bottom, about why LA is a perfect fit for their movie, other recent film adaptations of Shakespeare, and a notable ass. Mott and Kranz are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 11, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “A Very Good Piece of Work, I Assure You,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

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 they’re booked to star in a production of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. But 1948’s Kiss Me, Kate also duplicates the sexism of the Shakespeare play at its center.  You aren’t alone if you’re wondering, “Does Kiss Me, Kate work in 2019?” We asked Will Chase and Amanda Green. Chase (TV’s Nashville and Broadway’s Something Rotten) stars in the production as Fred Graham, Kiss Me, Kate’s Petruchio figure. Amanda Green is the Tony-nominated lyricist and composer who wrote additional material for the production, a key decision-maker when it came to updating the musical’s book and lyrics. Chase and Green talk to Barbara Bogaev about wrestling with Kiss Me, Kate treatment of women and finding the love at the heart of its script.

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 theater in 2015, she’s played King Lear on London’s West End and won a Tony Award for her performance in Edward Albee’s "Three Tall Women." Now, she’s playing Lear again in a new production, directed by Sam Gold, on Broadway. We were thrilled to get Glenda Jackson into the studio to talk about playing a king, opportunities for women in the arts, and the intricacies of her performance in the new production of "King Lear." Jackson is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published May 14, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “What Have You Performed?”, was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Technical help came from Robert Auld, Helena

After over thirty years as the artistic director of Washington, DC’s Tony-winning Shakespeare Theatre Company, Michael Kahn is retiring. Kahn has directed Off-Off-Broadway, Off-Broadway, and on Broadway. He directed Measure for Measure for Joe Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park. He ran, at various points, the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut, the McCarter Theatre, and the Acting Company. From 1992 – 2006, he was the Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division of the Juilliard School. As a director and as a teacher, Kahn has helped to usher in a new style of Shakespearean acting, one that combines the psychologically-grounded American “Method” with a British emphasis on text, tone, and technique. As Kahn opens The Orestia, the last production of his final season at Shakespeare Theatre Company, we brought him into the studio to talk about Shakespearean performance throughout the 20th century, Shakespeare’s continued relevance, and reading Shakespeare with his mother. Michael Kahn is intervi

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 Spirit is an hour-long virtual reality adaptation of Shakespeare’s play that puts you in the center of Shakespeare’s tragedy. We asked Commonwealth Shakespeare Company director Steve Maler and cinematographer Matthew Niederhauser of the virtual reality company Sensorium about creating the experience. They talk about the joys, challenges, and opportunities that come with adapting Shakespeare for virtual reality. How can VR augment the experience of watching Hamlet? What makes watching Hamlet in VR different from watching the play onstage or on your TV? Can VR make Shakespeare’s plays more accessible? Maler and Niederhauser are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit is a co-production with Google, and was created in partnership with public television station WGBH in Boston. Watch

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.” Julius Caesar was featured on PBS’s Great Performances on March 29, which made it the perfect time to call up Dame Harriet to discuss her decades-long career. We asked her about gender in Shakespeare, playing Ophelia, Portia, and Brutus, and her 2016 book, Brutus and Other Heroines: Playing Shakespeare’s Roles for Women. Harriet Walter is one of the most acclaimed performers on the British stage. She won the 1988 Olivier Award for Best Actress, the Evening Standard Award for her work as Elizabeth I in the 2005 London revival of Mary Stuart, and has starred in Twelfth Night, Macbeth and Antony

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. About fourteen years later, she had an idea for a story: a historian—who turns out to be a witch—discovers a lost and much-coveted manuscript that thrusts her into a world of vampires, demons, and magic. Harkness’s idea became A Discovery of Witches, the first book of her All Souls Trilogy. The novel is now a television series starring Teresa Palmer and Matthew Goode. The show comes to AMC and BBC America on April 7. We asked Harkness to join us on Shakespeare Unlimited to talk about how her research influenced her fiction writing and to tell us about how witches, demons, and the supernatural were perceived in Shakespeare’s England. Dr. Deborah Harkness is a teaching professor of history at the University of Southern California. She is the author of John Dee’s Conver

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 examined how the actor’s art has been understood through history: from Shakespeare’s 17th century, when spirits emitted by actors’ eyes took hold of audiences, to David Garrick’s 18th century, when pneumatic tubes transmitted emotion from the brain to the body. We talk with Joseph Roach about historical theories of acting. These theories—shared by doctors, scientists, actors, and audiences—affected the way some of our favorite playwrights wrote, and some of them even made their way into the most influential acting techniques of the  20th century. Joseph Roach was the long-time Sterling Professor of Theater at Yale University. The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting, one of a number of books by Roach, was originally published by the University of Delaware Press in 1985 and was reissued by the University of

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 war in a British prison called Dartmoor, during the War of 1812. Like its setting, the novel, Mad Blood Stirring, is bleak. But it also contains flashes of friendship and creativity that emerge from the Shakespeare plays staged under the order of a larger-than-life—but also real—character: African-American POW “King Dick,” who ran the prison’s segregated block. We invited Simon Mayo to join us on Shakespeare Unlimited to tell us about the history behind his novel and its characters. Simon Mayo currently co-hosts the popular Film Review show on BBC Radio 5 Live. The American edition of Mad Blood Stirring was published by Pegasus Books in 2019. Mayo is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 19, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All right

Actor Edwin Booth was one of the 19th century’s biggest stars. One of the illegitimate sons of equally-famous actor Junius Brutus Booth, he made thousands of dollars touring America’s grandest theaters and playing Shakespeare’s greatest roles. But today, relatively few people have heard of Edwin Booth. Instead, they remember his brother—also an actor—John Wilkes Booth. That’s because on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. 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. To learn more about the Booth brothers and their tumultuous lives, we talked to Nora Titone, resident dramaturg at Chicago’s Court Theatre and author of 2010’s My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy. Nora Titone is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 5, 2019. © Folger Shak

Olivia Hussey was just fifteen when she was cast in Franco Zeffirelli’s "Romeo and Juliet." When the film was released in October 1968, it catapulted Hussey and her Romeo, Leonard Whiting, to global stardom. Fifty years after the movie’s release, Hussey’s new memoir, "The Girl on the Balcony: Olivia Hussey Finds Life After 'Romeo and Juliet,'" tells the story of the actress’s life before, during, and after Romeo and Juliet. We talked with Hussey and asked her how she felt about Shakespeare before making the movie (“very boring”), filming the balcony scene (“I’d bump my teeth into his chin”), the endless press tour, and whether she’d do it all again. Olivia Hussey is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published January 22, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Speak Again, Bright Angel” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the Associate Producer.  It was edited by Gail Kern Paster.  Ben Lauer is the web p

In 1956, Duke Ellington gave a series of concerts at Ontario, Canada’s Stratford Festival. Afterward, festival staff asked the legendary composer—at that point, one of jazz’s elder statesmen—if he’d consider writing a piece about Shakespeare. A year later, Duke Ellington premiered and recorded Such Sweet Thunder, a suite of twelve tunes inspired by the Bard and his characters. We talked with University of New Hampshire Professor of English Douglas Lanier about the suite, the second chapter of Ellington’s career, and how they reflect shifting cultural perceptions of jazz. Lanier, who is also a musician, has written widely about Shakespeare and modern popular culture (in fact, that’s the name of his 2002 book: Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture), and is an expert on pop adaptations of Shakespeare’s works. He wrote about Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder for our 2007 exhibition, Shakespeare in American Life. Lanier is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.   From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published

Imagine getting the chance to interview Jude Law, Maxine Peake, Adrian Lester, David Tennant, Simon Russell Beale, and Nicholas Hytner about Shakespeare’s Hamlet. What would you ask? Would you want to hear about backstage hijinks? About Hamlet’s motivations? About what they would change about their performances?   Biographer and theatre historian Jonathan Croall interviewed those Shakespeareans and more for his new book, Performing Hamlet: Actors in the Modern Age. In it, Croall looks at 43 of the highest-profile Hamlet productions in England over the last 50 years, exploring how Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness, Michael Redgrave, Jonathan Slinger, Richard Burton, and many others have portrayed one of Shakespeare’s most memorable and mercurial characters. Croall came into the studio recently to tell us what he’s learned. He is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published December 11, 2018. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “

Do you remember what sparked your interest in Shakespeare? Was it a great performance, a magic moment in a high school English class, or a clever adaptation? When did you realize you were hooked? Across today’s pop culture landscape, there are more ways than ever to introduce young people to Shakespeare. Pop culture representations of Shakespeare’s plays aren’t just fun: they can help kids—and adults—to take ownership of Shakespeare’s language, critically examine his plots, and connect to his themes. And from West Side Story to The Simpsons, there’s no shortage of options. So we called up our friend Stefanie Jochman to give us a run-down on some of her favorite bits of pop Shakespeare. As a high school English teacher, Jochman is about as close as you can get to young people on the cusp of Bardolatry. We asked her how she takes advantage of pop culture in her classroom to deepen students’ understanding and appreciation of the Bard. Stefanie Jochman is a high school English teacher in Richmond, Virginia, and a