BardCast: The Shakespeare Podcast

Our episode on Richard III is more rushed than a usual episode because the play is extremely long. I'd like to come back to it to explore some of the interesting details we skipped. If anyone would like to hear that kind of episode, let us know!

Kevin Spacey's interview on playing Richard on stage

Ian McKellen's interactive site

To celebrate our third season, we thought we'd make an episode no one was asking for: another book club!

The books we talk about:

The Science of Shakespeare by Dan Falk

The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan

Ophelia by Lisa Klein

The Book of William by Paul Collins

To Be or Not To Be by Ryan North

The Horatio Hornblower series by CS Forester

The October Daye series by Seanan McGuire

In future episodes we're going to debate the subject, "is Othello about race?" and talking about how to stage Hamlet. Please let us know what you think at [email protected] 

Leave the subject name "Othello" or "Hamlet" in the email.

This is our 50th episode! The next episode is the beginning of season three, with our second Book Club episode.

Hamlet Act V is an odd one, like the rest of Hamlet.

Please vote on what you want the next episode to be!

We went to see Hamlet at the Guthrie! Then we made a podcast about what we thought.

We also talk about the Patreon campaign to support the podcast.

This does not count as an "episode" in terms of Patreon. Just a little bonus! Our next episode is Hamlet Act V, which is also our 50th episode! That will make it the end of season 2 of the podcast, how exciting!

After Hamlet, we'll have a vote on what play to do next. We're considering Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus, Richard the Third, and Henry the Sixth, Part One. If there's something else you'd like to do first, please let us know what you think!

We talk about Hamlet, Act IV. People start dying. I think we're going to do an episode about Polonius Laertes and Ophelia later. Especially considering whether they are necessary to the play.

New websites!

Tumblr 

Patreon

Patreon guide:

Patreon is a service where people can give money to content creators when they produce something. In this case, people can give money to us when we produce podcast episodes. The money goes to defray the expense of producing and hosting the podcast.

You can set limits on the amount of money you can donate. We only produce an episode once a month, so setting a limit of once a month for donations is good. If you only want to donate for a particular amount of time, you can limit the total number of donations as well.

Our choice of the theme for This Episode was not a coincidence: We're starting a Patreon campaign, so Patronage in Shakespeare's time seemed appropriate.

The Patreon page can be found HERE. You can set an automatic donation to the podcast with the release of each new episode. Thanks for everyone's past and future support!

Good Tickle Brain Shakespeare Comics.

The Life of Shakespeare: Copied From the Best Sources, Without Comment Great source of Shakespearean Primary Documents.

Shakespeare as a Groom of the Chamber A good example of Shakespearean research and writing.

Our Tumblr

Act III is really good. In fact, we skimmed over it a bit too fast, and I think we're going to have to have an episode about the monologues at some point. The monologues are so important, and have so much content, they certainly justify it.

For more info about how the audience sat on chairs on the stage in Shakespeare's time (and other details about the audience and the stage): http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=1434 http://www.shakespeare-online.com/essays/shakespeareaudience.html

Choice Conversations interviewed us:  choiceconversations.libsyn.com

I asked the director of Hamlet: The Series for a more detailed description of the project, and here it is:

"Hamlet: The Series is an

adaptation of the play into a six-episode web series in the original

language, but with modern dress and an abstract modern

setting.

-Episodes

are divided so that each takes place over about a one-day period, so

that the audience can feel how each scene connects to the next. The

amount of time between episodes however is left uncertain, as in the

play itself.

-The

early and late episodes follow the Quarto act breaks, but the middle

ones do not, because the breaks didn't match up to where I felt the days

began & ended.

-Several roles have been switched male-to-female, both to give it a more modern feel and to point out how some of

the themes still play in the modern world.

The main website is hamletseries.com.

There's also a Hamlet: The Series group on Facebook that people can

"Like". It will be available free on Youtube, for rental or digital

purchase on Amazon Instant Video, and for DVD-purchase on Amazon.  Episodes 1 - 3 should be available by about the time your Podcast goes live, the last three sometime in the Spring of this year."

Act II is a lighter part of Hamlet. More jokes, fewer ghosts. We find out a lot about our characters.

Anne Barton, a Shakespeare critic, recently died, if you want to find some of her writing, try out her page on the New York Review of Books, she's pretty good!

Thanks to everyone out there for all your support, next up is Act III! (Unless someone suggests something else good.)

PS.

Just updated the feed. Anyone having issues with downloading the podcast, please try again. Only the latest episode is on the new service, but we will be adding the backlog as space becomes available. Sorry about the difficulties.

We're happy to reveal our secret project: an interview of the Six Elements Theater Company! They're putting on Much Ado About Nothing soon, and we were very fortunate to be able to interview them about it.

Our next episode is Hamlet: Act II.

Information regarding the production

Ticket Info

http://www.tediousbrief.com/

http://www.sixelementscompany.org/

We're doing Hamlet in a series of five Acts. I think it's a way that we can look at the development of the story and characters as we go through it. Here's Act I.

Warning, if you haven't seen Hamlet, or know the story, I'd strongly advise seeing it before doing literally anything else. That may not be too practical because there aren't a lot of theaters performing it at any given time, but it's still nice to dream that someone could see it completely fresh, even today.

We're hoping to have our next episode be a very special edition. I'm keeping it a secret right now, but we're very excited!