Director Peter Sellars once staged "Antony and Cleopatra" in a Harvard dormitory swimming pool. His King Lear owned a Lincoln Continental. His work is complex. But what confounds some audience members has also won him ardent fans. One of them is Ayanna Thompson, a scholar of Shakespeare and performance studies who is now director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University. 

Thompson’s new book, the latest in Bloomsbury’s "Shakespeare in the Theatre" series, explores Sellars’s influences and tracks the predominant theme of his work: a laser-like focus on race in America. We talked with Thompson and Sellars himself about what can be gained from striving to understand the impenetrable. Thompson and Sellars are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

From the "Shakespeare Unlimited" podcast series. Published October 2, 2018. ©Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “I Understand Thee Well,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California and Brian Mendez at public radio station KJZZ in Phoenix. Special thanks to Julia Carnahan, Peter Sellars’s assistant, for her help in making this interview possible.

Understanding Peter Sellars

Home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare materials. Advancing knowledge and the arts. Discover it all at www.folger.edu. Shakespeare turns up in the most interesting places—not just literature and the stage, but science and social history as well. Our "Shakespeare Unlimited" podcast explores the fascinating and varied connections between Shakespeare, his works, and the world around us.

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In her new book, Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, Dame Judi  Dench and actor/director Brendan O'Hea chat about her long history with the Bard. On this episode, Dench and O'Hea join host Barbara Bogaev to talk about Dench's experiences playing Ophelia, Gertrude, Lady Macbeth and Titania. Plus, parrots, Polonius, dirty words, Ian McKellen, why it's easier to laugh while working on a tragedy, and more.

Dame Judi Dench has played nearly all of Shakespeare's great roles for women, plus a few non-Shakespearean parts, too, including the title role in Stephen Frears’ Philomena, M in 8 of the James Bond films, Granny in Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, and Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love, for which she won an Academy Award. Brendan O’Hea has acted in and directed multiple productions at Shakespeare's Globe in London, and appeared with Dench in the film Quantum of Solace. Their book Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent is available from St. Martin’s Press.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published April 9, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica, with help from Kendra Hanna. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from London Broadcast Studios and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Judi Dench On Seven Decades of Shakespeare, with Brendan O’Hea

Land enclosure. Wildlife management. Erosion. Pollution. Mining practices. Today, we’d call these environmental issues. But, hundreds of years before the modern environmental movement coalesced, these issues also appeared in Shakespeare’s plays. We talk to Todd Andrew Borlik, a professor at the University of Huddersfield and author of Shakespeare Beyond the Green World, Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain, about ecology and environmentalism in Shakespeare’s works.

Shakespeare Beyond the Green World, Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain is out now from Oxford University Press. 

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published April 9, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica, with help from Kendra Hanna. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu. We had technical help from Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Shakespeare and the Environment, with Todd Andrew Borlik

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf famously imagined what might have happened if Shakespeare had a sister who was as gifted a writer as he was. She invents “Judith” Shakespeare, and concludes that this female genius would have been doomed.

But that’s not the end of the story. If Woolf had read Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer (nee Bassano), Anne Clifford, and Elizabeth Carey, she might have thought differently about the fate of her fictional Judith Shakespeare. Ramie Targoff's new book, Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance, explores the lives and works of those four women.. Targoff tells us about them and reflects on why reading their work is so important.

Ramie Targoff teaches English and Italian literature at Brandeis University. She’s also a member of the Folger’s Board of Governors. Her book Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance is available from Knopf.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published March 12, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Digital Island Studios in New York and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Ramie Targoff on Women Writers of the English Renaissance

In her new memoir, "Green World," Shakespeare scholar Michelle Ephraim tells the story of how she came to Shakespeare relatively late in her education. Although she didn’t grow up with Shakespeare, Ephraim became transfixed by "The Merchant of Venice" as a grad student. In particular, she found herself drawn to Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, and the mysteries of their relationship. That curiosity led Ephraim to discover a novel Biblical interpretation of some lines from the play as she researched her dissertation. In Ephraim’s memoir, "Merchant" refracts through the changing dynamics of her own family, as her Holocaust-survivor parents age and she becomes a mother herself. She shares her story with host Barbara Bogaev.

Michelle Ephraim teaches Shakespeare at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. She’s the co-author of a cocktail recipe book called Shakespeare, Not Stirred, and the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast, both with Caroline Bicks. Her memoir Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare won the Juniper Award for Creative Nonfiction, and is out now from University of Massachusetts Press.
From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published March 12, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu. We had technical help from WICN in Worcester and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Green World: Michelle Ephraim on Discovering Shakespeare and Reevaluating The Merchant of Venice

Eddie Izzard has a long record of dramatic roles. But it’s her decades of experience as a stand-up comedian that prepared Izzard for her recent solo shows—first Great Expectations, and now Hamlet at New York’s Greenwich House Theatre.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 27, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Digital Island Studios in New York and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Understanding Peter Sellars

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