Shakespeare Unlimited podcast

On a 2015 state visit to Great Britain, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping called 17th century Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu the “Shakespeare of the East,” and ever since, there has been a concerted push to elevate Tang to the status of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare and his plays crop up in science fiction in a number of surprising places. Scholar Sarah Annes Brown shares how Shakespeare the man, Shakespeare the idea, Shakespeare’s writing, and Shakespeare’s meaning have appeared in the genre, dating all the way back to the 1820s.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 84 The title character of King Lear becomes a media mogul in Edward St. Aubyn’s new novel, Dunbar, which retells the story of one of Shakespeare’s most dysfunctional families for the Hogarth Shakespeare series. Edward St. Aubyn…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 83 Two literary scholars discuss Shakespeare’s influence on the politics, history, and literary culture of East Africa.  Edward Wilson-Lee, the son of white wildlife conservationists, spent his childhood in Kenya and now teaches Shakespeare at the University…

How do actors breathe life into Shakespeare’s texts? How do they take language that’s centuries old and make it sound so real and immediate?

In his one-man show Cry Havoc! actor Stephan Wolfert, a US Army veteran, draws together lines in Shakespeare’s plays spoken by soldiers and former soldiers—including Macbeth, Othello, and Richard III.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 80 Without a doubt, American composer Leonard Bernstein’s most significant contribution to the world of Shakespeare was West Side Story, the 1957 smash Broadway hit adaptation of Romeo and Juliet written and created by Jerome Robbins, Arthur…

Food historian Francine Segan shares how and what the Elizabethans ate, with their different kitchens, diet, food preparation, and especially, the way food was served. She tells listeners how to make a savory recipe for a salmon pie adapted from the 1600s.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 78 “Is it Shakespeare, or is it hip-hop?” British poet, rapper, and educator Kingslee James Daley, who goes by the stage name Akala, likes to recite a passage and then challenge his audience with this question. Even…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 77 Will, the new series on TNT, tells stories derived from what we often call Shakespeare’s “lost years”—the time before he made a name for himself as a writer. The series takes advantage of that gaping hole…

Phyllida Lloyd directed an all-female production of Julius Caesar starring Harriet Walter at the Donmar Warehouse in 2012. It was the first of a trilogy that The Guardian would call “one of the most important theatrical events of the past 20 years.”

21st-century wizardry meets the 17th-century kind in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Tempest with digital effects created by The Imaginarium, a performance-capture company that’s best known for movie and video game animations.