Best Tudor Robins Podcasts (2024)

1
Joe Papp and Shakespeare in the Park 35:32

5+ y ago35:32

35:32

Joe Papp was responsible for some of modern American theater's most iconic institutions: New York City's free Shakespeare in the Park. The Public Theater. The whole idea of "Off-Broadway." We spoke with Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan about Papp's life and work, from his hardscrabble childhood, through the frightening era of Joe McCarth…

1
Still Dreaming: Shakespeare with Seniors 32:34

6y ago32:34

32:34

In 2011, Ben Steinfeld and Noah Brody, co-directors of New York’s Fiasco Theater, were invited to an assisted living facility and nursing home just outside New York City to work with its residents on a production of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." Because it was The Lillian Booth Actors Home—a facility filled with retired singers, actors, dancers and …

1
Elizabeth Norton: The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women 32:18

6y ago32:18

32:18

What did everyday life look like for women throughout Tudor society? A new social history, "The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women by Elizabeth Norton," introduces us not only to the restrictions, but also to some of the surprising freedoms that touched these women’s lives. Hear the stories of remarkable women who owned businesses, stood up to kings, and …

1
Stephen Greenblatt on Shakespeare's Tyrants 37:19

6y ago37:19

37:19

“How is it possible for a whole country to fall into the hands of a tyrant? That’s a deeply unsettling question that Shakespeare grappled with again and again.” Stephen Greenblatt’s new book, "Tyrant," explores tyranny in Shakespeare’s plays. In the 100th episode of Shakespeare Unlimited, we talk with the eminent Shakespeare scholar about character…

1
Antioch Shakespeare Festival: John Lithgow, Robin Lithgow, and Tony Dallas 40:35

6y ago40:35

40:35

Over the course of three summers in the 1950s, Arthur Lithgow, Meredith Dallas, and a troupe of actors they’d gathered performed every single one of Shakespeare plays, in rep, at the Antioch Shakespeare Festival, also known as Shakespeare Under the Stars, at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.This podcast episode brings together the children o…

1
Paterson Joseph: Julius Caesar and Me 34:29

6y ago34:29

34:29

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, recently wrote a book about the experience called "Julius Caesar and Me: Exploring Shakespeare’s African Play." Paterson Joseph is interviewed by Barbara B…

1
Stephen Alford: London's Triumph 31:33

6y ago31:33

31:33

London in the time of William Shakespeare was a city in the midst of a phenomenal metamorphosis. During the course of Shakespeare’s professional life, the city experienced a meteoric transition, rocketing from the capital of the hinterlands to a cosmopolitan city on its way to becoming the capital of the western world. Stephen Alford, a professor o…

1
Astor Place Riot 31:26

6y ago31:26

31:26

Nearly 30 people were killed in May 1849 when fans of American actor Edwin Forrest rioted inside and outside New York’s Astor Place Opera House during a performance by Forrest’s rival, the British actor William Charles Macready. Barbara Bogaev interviews Heather Nathans and Karl Kippola about the riot. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series.…

1
How Shakespeare Changed My Life 33:29

6y ago33:29

33:29

Hear Sir Ben Kingsley, Earle Hyman, Liev Schreiber, James Earl Jones, Stacy Keach, Estelle Parsons, and others open up about their experiences with Shakespeare’s plays. Actor/director Melinda Hall interviewed these actors (and others), as well as writers, directors, linguists, and even a Holocaust survivor for her web-video series "How Shakespeare …

1
Antony Sher 36:25

6y ago36:25

36:25

Antony Sher talks about his experiences with the Royal Shakespeare Company and his roles as Lear in 2016, Falstaff in 2013, and Richard III in 1984. In preparing for these roles, Sher kept meticulous diaries, which he later published as books— "Year of the King" for Richard, "Year of the Fat Knight" for Falstaff, and now "Year of the Mad King," whi…

1
Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter on the George North Manuscript 34:44

6y ago34:44

34:44

Independent scholar Dennis McCarthy and Lafayette College English professor June Schlueter say they have discovered a major new source for Shakespeare’s Richard III, Henry V, Henry VI, Part II, and at least eight other plays. The scholarly world continues to investigate and debate these new claims, which, if proved true, would be a once-in-a-genera…

1
Derek Jacobi: Acting Shakespeare 28:09

6y ago28:09

28:09

Actor Derek Jacobi talks about his remarkable career, including advice he received from Richard Burton, a disappointing rejection by the Royal Shakespeare Company, sharing the stage with Laurence Olivier, performing King Lear in 2010, his collaborations with Kenneth Branagh, and a struggle with paralyzing stage fright that drove him away from the t…

1
Derek Jacobi: Playing Hamlet 29:07

6y ago29:07

29:07

Renowned actor 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, and as you can imagine, he’s devoted hours to thinking about Hamlet’s words, Hamlet’s motivations, and the best way to play the role. Derek Jacobi was int…

1
Bernard Cornwell: Fools and Mortals 32:01

6y ago32:01

32:01

Bernard Cornwell, a bestselling writer of historical fiction such as the Sharpe series, has turned to the world of the Elizabethan theater. His newest novel, Fools and Mortals, is a tale of love, intrigue, opulence, and violence, all narrated by William Shakespeare’s brother Richard. Bernard Cornwell was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shak…

1
Orson Welles 30:56

6y ago30:56

30:56

Orson Welles is perhaps most famous for his panic-inducing radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds and the award-winning film Citizen Kane. For his entire life though, Welles's obsession was Shakespeare. He produced and starred in Shakespeare plays on Broadway and directed and starred in multiple versions of Shakespeare's work on film, including …

1
Marketing Shakespeare 35:28

6+ y ago35:28

35:28

Getting audiences interested in Romeo and Juliet might be easy. But what about those more unfamiliar Shakespeare plays? Here’s an insider’s take on marketing and promotion at America’s Shakespeare festivals and theaters. Our guests are Katie Perkowski, Director of Marketing at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Alabama; Jeff Fickes, wh…

1
Sights, Sounds, and Smells of Elizabethan Theater 32:13

6+ y ago32:13

32:13

Sixteenth-century theater companies used a variety of physical and sensual staging effects in their productions to create a full-body experience for playgoers: fireworks hissing and shooting across the stage, fake blood, fake body parts, the smell of blood and death, and more. Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern are the editors of a 2013 collectio…

1
Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare in China 36:08

6+ y ago36:08

36:08

In 2015, on a state visit to Great Britain, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping called 17th-century Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu the “Shakespeare of the East,” and ever since, the Ministry of Culture for the People’s Republic has made a concerted push to elevate Tang to the status of Shakespeare. This episode explores just who Tang Xianzu was, and – more …

1
Shakespeare and Science Fiction 28:34

6+ y ago28:34

28:34

Shakespeare and his plays crop up in science fiction in a number of surprising places, from classic stories like Isaac Asimov’s “The Immortal Bard” to TV shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who. And it’s not just these more recent works: a production of Macbeth figures in Mary Shelley’s post-apocalyptic novel The Last Man, written in the 1820s. Our gue…

1
Edward St. Aubyn on Dunbar 30:34

6+ y ago30:34

30:34

The author of the Patrick Melrose novels talks about adapting the story of one of Shakespeare’s most dysfunctional families for the Hogarth Shakespeare series. In Edward St. Aubyn’s version of “King Lear,” called “Dunbar,” Lear becomes a media mogul whose evil daughters have locked him away in a psychiatric hospital. Edward St. Aubyn is interviewed…

1
Shakespeare in Swahililand 34:30

6+ y ago34:30

34:30

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 of Cambridge in England. Over the past few years he has spent extended periods back in Kenya, a…

1
Barry Edelstein: Thinking Shakespeare 35:05

6+ y ago35:05

35:05

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? Barry Edelstein, the Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director at The Old Globe in San Diego, is one of the nation’s most experienced Shakespeare directors. Join him for an abbreviated version of Thinking Shakespea…

1
Shakespeare and War 35:12

6+ y ago35:12

35:12

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. He puts those words to the task of explaining the toll that soldiering and war can take on the psyches of the men and women who volunteer for milit…

1
Bernstein, Shakespeare, and West Side Story 31:53

6+ y ago31:53

31:53

Next year, 2018, is the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. To honor him, we’re taking a look at the creation of "West Side Story," Bernstein’s most significant contribution to the world of Shakespeare. To help us out, we’ve invited in two guests with extensive knowledge. Mark Horowitz is archivist for the Leonard Bernstein Collection a…

1
Shakespeare's Kitchen 32:17

6+ y ago32:17

32:17

How and what did the Elizabethans eat? The kitchens of Shakespeare’s time looked very different from our kitchens today, and that’s not all that has changed when it comes to habits of diet, food preparation, and especially, the way food is served. In this episode, noted food historian Francine Segan leads listeners through a recipe for a salmon pie…

1
Akala and Hip-Hop Shakespeare 33:21

6+ y ago33:21

33:21

“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. Since 2009, under the auspices of his “Hip-hop Shakespeare Company,” Akala has been going to community centers, prisons, and schools in immigr…

1
Creating TNT's ‘Will:’ Craig Pearce and Shekhar Kapur 36:43

7y ago36:43

36:43

'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 in Shakespeare’s biography to weave an intricate and exciting tale of art, strife, death, love, poetry, and violence in Elizabethan England.Exe…

1
Phyllida Lloyd and All-Female Shakespeare 33:54

7y ago33:54

33:54

In 2012, the Donmar Warehouse presented an all-female production of "Julius Caesar," directed by Tony Award nominated director Phyllida Lloyd and starring Harriet Walter. The production was set in a womens' prison, and was the first of a trilogy of all-female productions that the Guardian would call “one of the most important theatrical events of t…

1
RSC's Digital Tempest 31:31

7y ago31:31

31:31

Twenty-first-century wizardry meets the seventeenth-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. RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran and Ben Lumsden, Imaginarium’s head of studio, are inter…

1
Tracy Chevalier: New Boy 28:17

7y ago28:17

28:17

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 elementary school playground in Washington, DC, in the early 1970s. The book, titled "New Boy," uses its distinctive setting to explore issues of disc…

1
The Globe to Globe Hamlet Tour 29:17

7y ago29:17

29:17

In 2014, Shakespeare’s Globe in London sent a group of actors on a two-year tour to perform "Hamlet" all around the world. They finished on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, after having traveled 193,000 miles and performed in 197 countries.Dominic Dromgoole, the Globe’s Artistic Director at the time, has written a book about th…

1
Adapting Shakespeare 35:12

7y ago35:12

35:12

What exactly counts as a Shakespeare adaptation? And why bother in the first place? In this podcast episode, we talk with three writers who have wrestled with these questions. Craig Wright is a TV writer and showrunner whose play, Melissa Arctic, a retelling of "The Winter’s Tale" set in rural Minnesota, premiered at Folger Theatre in 2004 and went…

1
Episode 06 - Svenia Busson - Edtech World Tour 45:10

7y ago45:10

45:10

Show guest - Svenia Busson, entrepreneur and explorer in the Education Innovation field. After publishing the Edtech 2016 report, in which she and Audrey Jarre emphasized the importance of dedicated organizations to foster education innovation in a given city and country, she is now founding LearnSpace, France's first Learning Innovation Cluster, w…

1
Shakespeare 400 Chicago 31:51

7y ago31:51

31:51

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, Chicago mobilized the city’s cultural and administrative resources in an unprecedented way. Barbara Gaines, founder and Artistic Director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, reflects on the "Shakespeare 400 Chicago" anniversary celebration. She was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From …

1
The Book of Will 32:40

7y ago32:40

32:40

Shakespeare is famous today thanks in no small part to two members of his acting company, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who published a collection of his plays seven years after his death. Lauren Gunderson has written a new play called "The Book of Will" that portrays Heminge and Condell, along with their families and everyone involved in gatheri…

1
Episode 05 - Robin Holmes - Creature School 1:06:30

7y ago1:06:30

1:06:30

Show guest - Robin Holmes, founder of Creature School in Paris. Robin's career is formed in between cultural productions in quite unconventional settings while being a teacher in traditional environments. We uncover many interesting bits around creativity, schooling, self-awareness, communities and more. Viewshow notes at tudornotes.com/podcast/ep0…

1
How 'King Lear' Inspired 'Empire' 30:57

7y ago30:57

30:57

You can find Shakespeare in all sorts of places, including the Fox TV series "Empire." From its very beginning, "Empire" has fashioned itself on the plot of "King Lear." And that's not the only Shakespeare connection to the program, as Ilene Chaiken, showrunner and executive producer for "Empire," explains. She was interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.Fro…

1
Something Rotten 32:03

7y ago32:03

32:03

In 2015, a new musical called "Something Rotten!" opened on Broadway. The plot: Two brothers living in England in 1595 have had their playwriting careers upended by the arrival of a new guy from Stratford upon Avon. Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick, brothers who co-wrote the music and lyrics for Something Rotten!, are our guests on this episode of Shake…

1
Episode 04 - Ben Koo - Bridge to the future 57:29

7y ago57:29

57:29

Show guest - Prof. Ben Koo - a brilliant thinker and educator based in Beijing. With a PhD from MIT, Ben moved to China and became a professor and researcher at Tsinghua University. Eventually, he got involved with the new education reform in China. We cover multiple subjects around technology, design and collective intelligence. Music credit: @My-…

1
Shakespeare and Marlowe 35:11

7y ago35:11

35:11

A few months ago, Oxford University Press decided that in the New Oxford Shakespeare, the plays Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 would no longer be listed as having been written by Shakespeare alone. Instead the title pages will say: “By William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.” To discuss how this kind of author attribution happens, we have Folger …

1
Juliet's Answer 32:01

7y ago32:01

32:01

Starting in the 1930s, people began sending letters asking for advice on love and romance to Verona, Italy—addressed to Juliet. In 2014, a lovelorn Canadian high school teacher traveled to Verona over summer vacation to volunteer as one of “Juliet’s secretaries.” The experience changed his life—and his perspective on Shakespeare’s star-crossed love…

1
Shakespeare in California 35:08

7y ago35:08

35:08

When we think of Shakespeare in the American West, Hollywood immediately comes to mind, but this podcast also takes us back to the California Gold Rush and the Americans who brought Shakespeare with them when they flooded westward. Stephen Dickey, a senior lecturer in the English Department at UCLA and the curator of “America’s Shakespeare: The Bar…

1
Q Brothers 26:18

7+ y ago26:18

26:18

Since 2002, Gregory and Jeffery Ameen Qaiyum, better known as G.Q. and J.A.Q – the Q Brothers – have been using hip-hop to adapt and update the plays of William Shakespeare. At the time we recorded this podcast, their show Othello: The Remix was running off-Broadway at the Westside Theater. They were interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.From the Shakespea…

1
Uncovering Shakespeare's House 33:05

7+ y ago33:05

33:05

Since 2002, a major organization in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, has supported an archaeological dig on the former grounds of a house called “New Place.” New Place was one of the biggest houses in Stratford when Shakespeare was a boy. Once he became a wealthy and famous playwright, he bought it. When he wasn’t in London, h…

1
Shakespeare and YA Novels 31:40

7+ y ago31:40

31:40

While print sales of adult fiction are down in the last decade, the juvenile market – which includes young adult literature or "YA" – has actually gone up 40 percent. In this episode, two YA authors talk about their writing, their audience, their inspirations, and the role that Shakespeare plays in all of it.Molly Booth’s first novel, "Saving Hamle…

1
Stephen Greenblatt on Shakespeare's Life Stories 28:36

7+ y ago28:36

28:36

There are a surprising number of characters in Shakespeare who propose or ask or even demand that someone tell their life’s story. (Think of Hamlet’s dying words to Horatio: “And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain / To tell my story.”) While that may not seem surprising on the face of it – Shakespeare was a storyteller after all – this ide…

1
Shakespeare and Girlhood 27:15

7+ y ago27:15

27:15

How does Shakespeare portray girls and girlhood in his plays, and what do those portrayals tell us about life in Elizabethan and Jacobean England? Our guest for this Shakespeare Unlimited episode, Deanne Williams of York University in Toronto, is the author of Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood, published in 2014. She is interviewed by Nev…

1
Shakespeare in Sign Language 27:07

7+ y ago27:07

27:07

Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, is the world’s only university designed to be barrier-free for deaf and hard of hearing students. For more than 150 years, its students have been performing Shakespeare without spoken words. This month, the Folger Shakespeare Library’s nationwide First Folio tour stops at Gallaudet, which also has a companion…

1
Shakespeare in Solitary 32:56

7+ y ago32:56

32:56

For ten years, Laura Bates, a professor at Indiana State University, taught Shakespeare to a group of inmates considered the worst of the worst – men incarcerated in the solitary confinement unit at Indiana’s Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. These are, for the most part, prisoners considered so dangerous they were kept apart, even from the othe…

1
Anecdotal Shakespeare 30:24

7+ y ago30:24

30:24

The curses associated with the Scottish play. Using a real skull for the Yorick scene in "Hamlet." Over the centuries, these and other fascinating theatrical anecdotes have attached themselves to the plays of William Shakespeare.Many of these stories have been told and re-told, over and over, century after century – with each new generation inserti…

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