Beyond Shakespeare

Live show this Sunday! A quick reminder that we have a live streamed audio adaptation of Occupation and Idleness on Sunday 22nd October at 2.30pm We’re recording a bunch of new stuff across the day, and then in the afternoon we’re live streaming a full run of Occupation and Idleness by the Unknown, plus a bonus mini sketch, Preist the Barber. Occupation and Idleness is the first surviving true interlude play – it’s from the middle of the fifteenth century and is mostly forgotten about – but it does everything your average Tudor interlude will do, it just does it in the medieval period. It’s a three hander about education – with a cheeky school boy who just doesn’t want to do any work, being encouraged – shall we say – to study by Occupation, a hard working farmer, and Doctrine, the figure representing religion in the play. It’s a lively, nay, a tad violent a play, with an ending that isn’t surprising as to what happens – but perhaps surprising how it happens. It was, as ever, a different age. Or is it?  I