Theater and performance

Shakespeare’s plays are full of unforgettable women, but too often their voices are cut short. In She Speaks: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said, acclaimed actor Harriet Walter imagines what they might tell us if given the chance, using original poems that deepen their stories and shed new light on Shakespeare’s plays.

Marlowe and Shakespeare were both born in 1564, rising from working-class origins to find success in the new world of the theater. But before Shakespeare transformed English drama, Marlowe had already done so.

Journalist, playwright, and poet Al Letson talks about Julius X, his play that borrows lines, characters, and plot from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to tell the story of Malcolm X. He shares the play’s origins and his approach to creating art.

Rosa Joshi’s bold staging of Julius Caesar at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, performed entirely by women and nonbinary actors, reframes Shakespeare’s political thriller for today’s fight against autocracy.

A six-episode podcast drops you inside Hamlet from the prince’s POV. Director Jeremy McCarter explains how 21st-century technology unlocked a fresh take on Shakespeare’s tragedy.

When theaters shut down during COVID, actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen performed Hamlet inside Grand Theft Auto Online. Filmmaker Pinny Grylls captured it all in a documentary, Grand Theft Hamlet.

Called “the finest actor of his generation,” Beale has played just about everyone in Shakespeare’s canon. He reflects on the roles that have shaped his career and how his approach has evolved over time.

In Shakespeare’s time, women onstage were played by boys, and for those boy players, fame could be fleeting. Nicole Galland’s novel Boy follows Alexander “Sander” Cooke, a real-life actor in Shakespeare’s company.

We talk to scholar Fiona Ritchie, whose new book, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble, details their rise to fame.

The former Royal Shakespeare Company Artistic Director joins us to talk about where to start with Shakespeare, directing Kenneth Branagh’s big break, and his new book.

Director Kenny Leon’s production of Much Ado About Nothing mesmerized audiences during the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park (now available on PBS’s Great Performances). Leon shares how he approaches a new production and how Shakespeare’s comedies speak to our present moment.