Theater and performance

“Theaters are time machines, and Shakespeare knew it,” writes Austin Tichenor. “Only in the theater can people so persuasively journey from the present to another time and place. It’s an act of collective imagination.”

The first Black actor to play a wide variety of Shakespearean roles in America, Hyman was equally loved for his portrayals of Panthro in ThunderCats and Russell Huxtable on The Cosby Show. His papers are now in the Folger collection.

Patricia Akhimie, curator of the Folger exhibition To Hear Her Speak, asks: “What do Black women and Shakespeare have to do with each other?” Quite a bit over 400 years it turns out, as she shows in the catalog’s introduction.

In the theater and classroom, scholar Jean E. Howard explores how to develop “democratic practices that embrace the thoughts and talents of multitudes and recover the joy of participating with others in generous, life-affirming humanistic inquiry.”

Arts administrator, writer, and advocate Howard Sherman recently saw The Winter’s Tale for the first time. He shares his approach to seeing Shakespeare after decades of theatergoing and the rewards of letting the production speak first.

Shakespeare’s plays—and plays and musicals inspired by him—are always a feature of the Edinburgh Fringe, the world’s largest performing arts festival. Austin Tichenor shares some of the 40 productions playing in Scotland this August.

60 years after the premiere of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, a new stage comedy is using Stoppard’s absurdist template to explore the fears and struggles of the two main clowns from Much Ado About Nothing.

150 years after her death Margaret of Anjou returned as a character in four early Shakespeare plays, Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 and Richard III. She’s found fans in every era since, including in community performances on the island of Roatán.

From Hamlet to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and more: try out our quiz about Shakespeare’s plays within a play, when his characters put on shows of their own.

As America celebrates its 250^th anniversary, we’re exploring the larger-than-life role played by an English playwright from more than 400 years ago in American entertainment, education, and history. Enjoy a round-up of Folger podcasts and blog posts about Shakespeare’s influence in America.

The Improvised Shakespeare Company has been creating hilarious Shakespearean masterpieces—from an audience suggestion of a title of a show that has never been written—for 20 years. Austin Tichenor shares how they do it.

In honor of Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, Carla Della Gatta looks at the extraordinary mix of Latinx-inspired, bilingual, and multilingual productions and adaptations performed on stages, large and small, across the United States.