Actor interviews

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 99 Over the course of three summers  in the 1950s, Arthur Lithgow and a troupe of actors he’d gathered performed every single one of Shakespeare plays, in rep, at the Antioch Shakespeare Festival, also known as Shakespeare…

In 2012 the Royal Shakespeare Company staged the first-ever, high-profile, all-black British Shakespeare production, Julius Caesar, set in Africa. The actor who played Brutus, Paterson Joseph, wrote a book about the experience. He also talks about his early work, his thoughts about race in the British theater, about the proper way to play Brutus, and much more.

Sir Antony Sher, one the greatest Shakespearean actors of the 20th and 21st centuries, shares why he found preparation to be the secret behind every great Shakespearean performance. He talks about the RSC and playing Lear, Falstaff, and Richard III.

Actor Derek Jacobi talks about his remarkable career, including the advice he received from Richard Burton, a disappointing rejection by the Royal Shakespeare Company, sharing the stage with Laurence Olivier, his collaborations with Kenneth Branagh, and a struggle with paralyzing stage fright.

Derek Jacobi talks about the Shakespearean role for which he is best known, Hamlet. Beginning at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1957, Jacobi has acted this role on stage nearly 400 times.

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.

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. We talk with them about Othello: The Remix.

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…

Discovered in a treasure-filled parking lot in Leicester, England, an ancient manuscript proves to be the long lost first play by none other than the young William Shakespeare from Stratford. That’s the premise of the latest work from the Reduced Shakespeare Company, William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged).

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 2 In Shakespeare’s time, only men appeared on stage, with teenage boys playing the women’s parts. Today, women play women and sometimes men—and vice-versa. In this podcast we have gathered some of the best-known actresses in the…