Shake the Sphere with Sid

Sid talks with Lawrence Quill, one of the most brilliant and inventive of thinkers, whose inquiries run from the use of nostalgia in politics to governments' recourse to secrecy.  Professor of Political Science at San Jose State University, Lawrence has been a Technology and Democracy Fellow at the Center for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and the Humanities at Cambridge University. He is also the Co-Director of the (wonderfully named) Loneliness Project at his university.  The discussion ranges from the idea that our so-called reality might just be a simulation, to the pleasure of having conversations not just with the living but with the dead as well.  Quill's inspiration here was Machiavelli's "Letter to Vettori" of 1513.

Sid talks with Susan Cerasano, the Edgar W. B. Fairchild Professor of Literature at Colgate University. Now, when Susan “talks” about Shakespeare, or Marlowe--for that matter, the words flow from her like some joyous, fast-moving stream, eager to flood its banks. Wonderfully perceptive parallels are made, insights into the characters rooted in Susan's love of the script. Little wonder that she is so popular with students and her colleagues. This is only half the story. Susan is no less interested in the physical Renaissance theatre, its role in the social and political life of the community, as in a piece she contributed to my first collection of essays: "Theatre Inside and Out: Early Modern Playhouse Yards as Liminal Space." Susan’s next big project is the story of the business partnership of the actor Edward Alleyn and the theatre entrepreneur Philip Henslowe.

Sid talks with Brian Rhinehart, Professor of Theatre at the Actors Studio Drama School in New York. Old friends for years now, they have been each other’s actor and director (and had great fun doing so), in everything from improv to the plays of Sam Shepard. Brian directed the award-winning Butoh Medea on Theatre Row in Manhattan, was named “Best Director” for Einstein’s Dream at New York’s International Fringe Festival, and was awarded a Fullbright for his Dispersal: A Gentrification Story.  He is most interested these days in Site-Specific, Landscape, Citizen, and Devising theatre, and has given seminar and workshops in acting, directing, and improv all over world. 

Sid talks with David O’Donnell, now adjunct professor at Victoria University in Wellington. While his natural modesty would prevent him for acknowledging the fact, David has perhaps been the person most responsible for the recognition and growth of native New Zealand actors, playwrights, and composers. Himself a fine actor and director, he has staged some twenty productions of New Zealand plays. He was also the editor of the Playmarket New Zealand PlaySeries from 2010 to 2023, and was honored with the Mayoral Award for Significant Contribution to the Theatre. David is especially concerned with marginalized artists and has encouraged and staged the works of the Māori, the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand (Aotearoa).

Sid talks with Paul Richards, Professor of Music and Head of Composition at the University of Florida. When I speak of my colleague’s music as being “all over the place,” I mean this as the ultimate compliment. Richards has written orchestral, vocal, chamber, and theatrical works, as well as full-length operas. His music has been praised for its “strong, pure melodic gifts,” and he has had commissions from numerous organizations, orchestras, and university programs. Paul is especially interested in the relation between words and music, their aesthetic differences no less than similarities, how artists in two such different media can complement, even enhance each other’s work

Sid talks with Henry Sussman, one of the country’s most eminent scholars and teachers, who has used his study of literature and culture to put in context his political commentary, as in The Great Dismissal: Memoir of the Cultural Demolition Derby, 2015-2021. October 2023 saw the premier of Henry’s play Soiree at Walter Benjamin’s at the New York Theatre Festival. And if this weren’t enough, his debut collection of poetry “Polaroids of Turbulence” was published by BlazeVOX Books in 2024. One has called his poetry “allusive, ornate, beautiful and complex, and rich as my mother’s vegetable soup.”

Sid talks with Jerry Harp, a teacher much in demand at Lewis and Clark College. His four books of poetry reveal an artist of extraordinary sensitivity, and Jerry uses that sensitivity in his study For Us What Music: The Life and Poetry of Donald Justice. It was his role as the Friar in a production of Romeo and Juliet that led him to examine the complexity of that character, then write about the experience in “Uncertain Text: Student and Teacher Find Their Way Onstage in Romeo and Juliet,” which in turn has led to a full-length study and reassessment of Shakespeare’s early tragedy.

Sid talks with Donna Soto-Morettini, who has done just about everything in the business. Rock and Roll singer in California. Director of Drama for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal Central School in London. She is highly sought after as an acting coach and casting director (for Andrew Lloyd Webber, among others). Her books on acting, auditioning, getting into character, and singing are justly popular. Donna confesses that her favorite role was as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd.

Sid talks with Michael Hill about how his work in eighteenth century studies has expanded to his concerns with environmental humanities, the interaction of war and culture, and, most recently, the link between war and climate change. A professor of English at SUNY/Albany, Mike shows how one’s “field” can be the door to wider, emergent contemporary topics, as in his Masses, Class, and the Public Sphere (2000) and After Whiteness: Unmaking an American Majority (2004).

Sid talks with Avra Sidiropoulou, a brilliant director who has staged plays all over the world. A professor at the Open University of Cyprus, she has written extensively about the contemporary theatre—indeed, theatre people have found essential her book Directions for Directors (2018). With a concern both for her actors and audience, she speaks, among many other works, in wonderful detail about her recent recasting of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in light of Stanislavski’s 1889 production for the Moscow Arts Theatre, as well as own adaptation Enter Hamlet.