Farah Karim-Cooper on The Great White Bard
Can we love Shakespeare and be antiracist? Farah Karim-Cooper’s new book explores the language of race and difference in plays such as Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, and The Tempest.
Adrian Lester on Playing Rosalind, Henry V, Othello, and Hamlet
Actor Adrian Lester walks us through big moments in his illustrious career, including Cheek by Jowl’s all-male “As You Like It” and Peter Brook’s “Hamlet.”
Debra Ann Byrd on Becoming Othello
Theater-maker and past Folger Fellow Debra Ann Byrd tells us about her solo show.
Shakespeare's Language and Race, with Patricia Akhimie and Carol Mejia LaPerle
Dr. Patricia Akhimie and Dr. Carol Mejia LaPerle explore the ways that Shakespeare’s language—think descriptors like “fair,” “sooty,” and “alabaster”—constructs and enshrines systems of race and racism.
Race and Blackness in Elizabethan England, with Ambereen Dadabhoy
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 168 When did the concept of race develop? How far should we look back to find the attitudes that bolster white supremacy? We ask Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy, an assistant professor of literature at Harvey Mudd College, and…
Iqbal Khan
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 128 “If, with Shakespeare, we can thrill and tease an audience into embracing unknowing, that is one of the most important gifts that we can give,” says director Iqbal Khan. Khan has directed at Shakespeare’s Globe, in…
Phyllida Lloyd and All-Female Shakespeare
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 76 In 2012, the Donmar Warehouse opened an all-female production of Julius Caesar, directed by Tony Award-nominated director Phyllida Lloyd and starring Harriet Walter as Brutus. The production was set in a womens’ prison, and would be…
Tracy Chevalier: New Boy
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 74 Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring, takes on the tragedy of Othello in her latest novel, part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. But in a twist, she moves the action to a public…
Q Brothers - Othello: The Remix
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 64 Since 2002, Gregory and Jeffery Ameen Qaiyum, better known as GQ and JAQ – the Q Brothers – have been using hip-hop to adapt and update the plays of William Shakespeare. At the time we recorded…
Keith Hamilton Cobb on American Moor
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 54 Othello is the story of a tragic murder and suicide involving a dark-skinned general and his aristocratic, white-skinned bride. Who should direct it? Who’s “allowed” to? What if, say, a white director and the actor he’s…
Othello and Blackface
On the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, Ian Smith and Ayanna Thompson talk 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.