Where There's a Will: Finding Shakespeare

Enjoy this episode from Play On Podcasts.

The lovesick Trojan prince Troilus is so consumed by his infatuation with Cressida that he refuses to fight in the endless Trojan war with the Greeks, lamenting his woes to Cressida’s uncle, Pandarus, who serves as the go-between for the lovers. Aeneas arrives with news that Troilus’s brother, Paris, has been wounded by Menalaeus in battle, persuading Troilus to rejoin the fight. Inside the Trojan Citadel, Cressida gets the gossip from her friend Alexandra before Pandarus arrives to sing Troilus’s praises. Together, Pandarus and Cressida watch the Trojan warriors return from battle. Pandarus keeps heaping praise on Troilus as Cressida remains aloof, but once alone, she confesses she’s only playing “hard to get” in order to keep Troilus interested. Meanwhile, in the Greek encampment outside Troy, the Generals Agamemnon, Nestor and Ulysses lament that the war has dragged on for years without victory. Ulysses blames it on a breakdown of hierarchy and order brought on by Achilles’ mocking their leadership, whipping the Greeks into a frenzy of anger and frustration.

The PLAY ON PODCAST SERIES, “TROILUS AND CRESSIDA”, was written by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE and translated into modern English verse by LILLIAN GROAG. All episodes were directed by KIM MARTIN COTTON. Radio play by CATHERINE EATON.

Executive Producer: MICHAEL GOODFRIEND

This podcast was recorded under a SAG-AFTRA AGREEMENT.

The cast is as follows:

BENJAMIN BONENFANT    as  TROILUS

AWNI ABDI-BAHRI           as  CRESSIDA

JAMES UDOM             as  ACHILLES

GEOFFREY ALLEN MURPHY  as  AJAX

STEVEN RATTAZZI          as  PANDARUS and MENELAUS

DAISUKE TSUJI             as  THERSITES

ANNA SUNDBERG           as  ALEXANDRA, CASSANDRA and HELEN

NOAH KEYISHIAN           as  AENEAS, MARGARELON and HELENUS

ROB NAGLE                 as  AGAMEMNON

LISA WOLPE                as  ULYSSES

WAYNE T. CARR             as  HECTOR and CALCHAS

EDWARD GERO             as  NESTOR and PRIAM

EDDIE LOPEZ               as  PATROCLUS and PARIS

JOHNNY WU                as  DIOMEDES

KIM MARTIN COTTON        as  ANDROMOCHE

Casting by THE TELSEY OFFICE: KARYN CASL, CSA.

Voice and Text Coach: JULIE FOH

Original Music Composition, Mix and Sound Design by LINDSAY JONES. Sound engineering and mixing by SADAHARU YAGI. Mix Engineer and Dialogue Editor: LARRY WALSH. Podcast Mastering by GREG CORTEZ at New Monkey Studio. Coordinating Producer: TRANSCEND STREAMING (KYRA BOWIE and LEANNA KEYES). 

The Play On Podcast Series “TROILUS AND CRESSIDA ” is produced by NEXT CHAPTER PODCASTS and is made possible by the generous support of THE HITZ FOUNDATION. Visit NEXTCHAPTERPODCASTS.COM for more about the Play On Podcast Series. Visit PLAYONSHAKESPEARE.ORG for more about Play On Shakespeare. 

Subscribe to Play On Premium for ad-free episodes and join our Patreon for exclusive merchandise and early commercial-free releases. Go to nextchapterpodcasts.com for our Bonus Content, where you’ll find interviews with the artists, producers and engineers who brought it all to life. And remember: “The proud man eats himself”. 

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Amid the many competing priorities of our busy lives, it can feel difficult to make the right decisions―ones that feel aligned with the things we care about. Change can feel almost impossible. In the new audiobook, What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change, award-winning researcher Emily Falk reveals how we can transform our relationship with the daily choices that define our lives by thinking like a neuroscientist about what matters most to us.

Falk shows how we can work more strategically with our brains to make more fulfilling choices. Whether deciding on lunch or a career, changing our routines or other people’s minds, we learn how changing what we think about can change what we think, connecting with our core values can make us less defensive, and broadening our curiosity about different perspectives can seed innovation.

Written for anyone who has ever exasperatedly asked themselves “Why am I doing this?!”, What We Value is a groundbreaking guide to finding new possibilities in our choices—and the lives we ultimately make with them.

Learn more about What We Value at pushkin.fm/audiobooks, Audible, Spotify, or wherever you get your audiobooks.

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For the International Day of Happiness, we're sharing a special episode from The Happiness Lab. It's a chance to talk about happiness and what we can all do to be happier. March 20th also sees the release of the World Happiness Report. A big finding of 2025's report is that more of us are dining alone—and that's bad news. 

The report's editor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve shares the stark figures showing that shared meals are in decline, while Dr. Anne Fischel of The Family Dinner Project gives tips on how to dine better with friends, families and colleagues. 

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Countless decisions, large and small, aided The Beatles’ ascent to the top of popular culture. The release of their debut single, “Love Me Do,” in the UK in the fall of 1962 was one of those decisions. Their debut on American television was another. In this episode from McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, Paul McCartney and Paul Muldoon discuss the early evolution of The Beatles. Listen to the new season now.

“McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” is a co-production between iHeart Media, MPL and Pushkin Industries.

The series was produced by Pejk Malinovski and Sara McCrea; written by Sara McCrea; edited by Dan O’Donnell and Sophie Crane; mastered by Jason Gambrell with assistance from Jake Gorski and sound design by Pejk Malinovski. The series is executive produced by Leital Molad, Justin Richmond, Lee Eastman and Scott Rodger.

Thanks to Lee Eastman, Richard Ewbank, Scott Rodger, Aoife Corbett and Steve Ithell.

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What happens when William Shakespeare walks into a Yom Kippur service? We take a deep dive into how Shakespeare informs contemporary religious practices and faith traditions, and explore one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays—host Barry Edelstein's favorite—The Winter's Tale. Its focus on the idea of wonder ties all of the Bard's plays, and this season of Where There’s a Will, together.

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What happens when a regular person has to publicly speak Shakespeare for a wedding or funeral or bat mitzvah? Barry coaches two listeners through their moments in the spotlight, and along the way illuminates how Shakespeare’s language works. Also, we check out Shakespeare in the mouths of the baseball announcers for the San Diego Padres.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame - Military Band Edition courtesy of US Air Force Band of the West.

Sonnets 18 and 116

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare                                                                                        

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed. But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare                                                                             

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds Or bends with the remover to remove. O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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Is a Shakespeare-obsessed 15 year-old geeky, or totally cool? We meet a group of teens who’ve immersed themselves in Shakespeare to hear why they believe this writer speaks to them more clearly than any other. And we also hear about even younger kids with a very special relationship to the Bard: autistic children, who discover ways to express themselves through a writer from 400 years ago.

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To be, or not to be President? Shakespeare is a longtime ally of America’s Commanders-in-Chief, and for good reason: there's plenty to be found in his plays about leadership and how it works. We eavesdrop in the Oval Office to hear how Shakespeare shapes the thinking and feeling of political leaders, and how they draw on him for wisdom and solace. Just don't forget to keep an eye out for Brutus.

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Where men are women, women are men, and gender is As You Like It. Co-host Em Weinstein leads an exploration of how Shakespeare bent gender on the stage and in his writing, and how that inspired Em—and others—to step into their own truth.

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Today, we want to share a preview of another Shakespeare podcast we think you will enjoy, Play On Podcasts, which reimagines Shakespeare's timeless tales into epic audio adventures. Each episode explores plays from Macbeth to A Midsummer Night's Dream, created specifically for the podcast form by some of America's most exciting playwrights, directors, and composers and performed by stage and screen's best. This clip is from the fifth episode, In the Devil's Other Name, of their Macbeth series. In it, Edward Torres directs a Latinx cast into the dark corners of the human psyche through Migdalia Cruz's rendering of Macbeth. It features drag superstars Manila Luzon, Monét X-Change, and Ms. Peppermint as The Witches, with sound design and original composition by David Molina.

For more about Play On Podcasts, visit https://ncpodcasts.com/playonpodcast.

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