Theater and performance

See what’s playing at our Shakespeare Theater Partners around the country this July.

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.

To commemorate Black History Month, we’re sharing interviews with acclaimed Black theater artists—actors, directors, playwrights—and scholars about performing and adapting Shakespeare, then and now.

Erika T. Lin studies early modern holidays and her work has yielded some surprising revelations—not only about the festivities themselves, but about the relationship between holidays and what we now think of as “theater.”

Acclaimed Shakespearean actor Harriet Walter reimagines what the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet might have said after Juliet’s death in an excerpt from She Speaks!.

Inspired by the Olympics, Austin Tichenor explores how Shakespeare uses sports in his plays, including as a way to show tensions between England and France.

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.

Austin Tichenor explores small-cast Shakespeare and the artistic possibilities of a few performers playing multiple roles.

Director Sam Gold shares what he loves most about Macbeth, why it stands out from other Shakespeare tragedies he’s directed, and how his ideas about the play changed over time.