Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

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Peter Brook (Rebroadcast) Jul 05, 2022

Show notes

Legendary director Peter Brook died last week at the age of 97. Brook was one of theater’s most influential directors. His 1970 A Midsummer Night’s Dream is among that play’s most lauded and best-known productions. His 1968 book The Empty Space is a classic of theater writing. Over the course of his career, he directed actors including John Gielgud, Glenda Jackson, Ben Kingsley, Adrian Lester, Vivienne Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield, Patrick Stewart, and Frances de la Tour, and won multiple Tony and Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Praemium Imperiale, and the Prix Italia. When we spoke to Brook in 2019, his new play, Why?, co-written and co-directed by longtime collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne, was about to kick off a tour of China, Italy, and Spain, and his newest book, Playing by Ear: Reflections on Sound and Music, had just been released. Brook spoke with Barbara Bogaev about his remarkable career, his illustrious collaborators, and the process of making theater. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. This podcast episode, “My Age Is as a Lusty Winter,” was originally published December 10, 2019, and was rebroadcast July 5, 2022. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. It was produced under the supervision of Garland Scott and is presented with permission of rlpaulproductions, LLC, which created it for the Folger. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. With technical helped from Andrew Feliciano at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Alan Leer at The Sound Company Studios in London.

Andrea Mays on The Millionaire and the Bard (Rebroadcast) Jun 21, 2022

Show notes

Henry Clay Folger paid a world record price for a book—not once, but twice—as he became the world's leading collector of Shakespeare First Folios. The Folger Shakespeare Library celebrated its 90th birthday this past April. Did you ever wonder how all of our books got here? We talk with economist and author Andrea Mays about The Millionaire and the Bard, her 2015 biography of Henry Clay Folger, who founded the Folger together with Emily Jordan Folger, his wife. Mays shares some of the fascinating financial and personal details of Folger's life: in particular, how he went about assembling the world’s largest Shakespeare collection. Mays is interviewed by Neva Grant. The Millionaire and the Bard was published by Simon & Schuster in 2015. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “Mine Own Library With Volumes That I Prize” was published November 18, 2015, and rebroadcast June 21, 2022. It was produced under the supervision of Garland Scott, and is presented with permission of rlpaulproductions LLC, which created it for the Folger. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French and Ben Lauer are the web producers.

Joe Papp and Shakespeare in the Park, with Kenneth Turan (Rebroadcast) Jun 07, 2022

Show notes

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 works, from his hardscabble childhood, through the frightening era of Joe McCarthy, to the founding of Shakespeare in the Park and The Public. Published in 2009, Turan's epic oral history of the early years of the New York Shakespeare Festival and The Public Theater is called Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told. To create that book, he spent untold hours with Joe Papp and also talked with New York politicians, Broadway producers, and seemingly everyone else who helped Papp make Shakespeare in the Park a reality, including performers like James Earl Jones, George C. Scott, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Colleen Dewhurst, Tommy Lee Jones, and a Staten Island car-wash employee who would go on to play Romeo under the stage name of Martin Sheen. Turan is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Kenneth Turan was film critic for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told was published by Anchor Books, a division of Random House. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Originally published August 7, 2018, and rebroadcast June 7, 2022. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, "This Green Plot Shall Be Our Stage," was produced under the supervision of Garland Scott, and is presented with permission of rlpaulproductions LLC, which created it for the Folger. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Lauren Cascio and Nick Bozzone at Formosa Commercials recording studio in Santa Monica, California.

Brett Dean and Matthew Jocelyn on Their Hamlet Opera May 24, 2022

Show notes

A new opera version of Hamlet is onstage at New York’s Metropolitan Opera through June 9. Composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn talk with host Barbara Bogaev about adapting the texts of the earliest editions of Hamlet to create a libretto that subverts expectations and composing orchestrations that take audiences inside the minds of Hamlet and Ophelia. The Saturday, June 4 performance of Hamlet will be transmitted live to movie theaters around the world via The Met’s Live in HD series. Watch it at a cinema near you. Brett Dean is the composer and Matthew Jocelyn is the librettist for Hamlet, which premiered at Britain’s Glyndebourne Festival in 2017. The opera is onstage at the Metropolitan Opera through June 9. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published May 24, 2022. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Sing Thee to Thy Rest,” was produced by Richard Paul. 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 Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

Shakespeare and Ukraine, with Irena Makaryk May 10, 2022

Show notes

Director Oleksandr “Les” Kurbas’s 1920 Macbeth was the first production of a Shakespeare play in Ukraine. Kurbas staged the play in the midst of the famine and violence of the Russian Civil War: Lady Macbeth fainted from hunger in the wings, and Kurbas used series of hand signals to warn the actors onstage that they were about to be shot at. Kurbas was one of the main subjects of “‘What's Past is Prologue’: Shakespeare and Canon Formation in Early Soviet Ukraine,” a presentation given by Dr. Irena Makaryk at Shakespeare and the Worlds of Communism, a 1996 conference sponsored by the Folger, Penn State University, and the Russian Embassy in Washington. The event looked at Shakespeare’s role in the formation of culture within the bloc of countries that had been allied with the newly-collapsed Soviet Union. Makaryk’s paper explored the ways Ukrainians used Shakespeare’s plays to assert the existence and value of Ukrainian culture. She also examined how the Russians—first the Czars, and then the Soviets—repressed Ukrainian theater order to keep Ukrainian culture under their thumb. As Vladimir Putin’s savage invasion of Ukraine continues, we spoke with Makaryk about her research on Shakespeare, theater, and Ukrainian national identity. She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Irena Makaryk is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. Her book Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn: Les Kurbas, Ukrainian Modernism, and Early Soviet Cultural Politics was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2004. You can read her paper “‘What's Past is Prologue’: Shakespeare and Canon Formation in Early Soviet Ukraine” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism. The paperback edition was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2013. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published May 10, 2022. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “I Do but Dream on Sovereignty,” was produced by Richard Paul. 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 Andrew Feliciano, Lucas Kuzma and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

Leonard Barkan on Reading Shakespeare Reading Me Apr 26, 2022

Show notes

In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes that theater holds a “mirror up to nature.” In his new book, Princeton professor Leonard Barkan tells us that when he reads Shakespeare, it holds a mirror up to Leonard Barkan—and that when you read Shakespeare, it holds up a mirror to you. When most of us read, Barkan reminds us, we bring our own experiences to the text, asking personal questions like “What about my life?” and “How does this make me feel?” His book Reading Shakespeare Reading Me combines memoir and literary criticism, analyzing ten Shakespeare plays and locating their parallels in the intimate details of his parents’ marriages and early lives, his coming of age as a gay man, and many of the deaths, loves, achievements, and disappointments that have made up his time on Earth. Leonard Barkan is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Leonard Barkan is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books including The Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking, and the Culture of Europe from Rome to the Renaissance; Michelangelo: A Life on Paper; and Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture. Reading Shakespeare Reading Me was published by Fordham University Press in 2022. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published April 26, 2022. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Who Is It That Can Tell Me What I Am?” was produced by Richard Paul. 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 Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Josh Wilcox and Walter Nordquist at Brooklyn Podcasting Studio in New York.

Pamela Hutchinson on Asta Nielsen's Hamlet Apr 12, 2022

Show notes

In 1921, Asta Nielsen, one of the world’s biggest movie star in the world had just formed her own production company, and decided to open it up by playing Hamlet. Plenty of women had done that on the stage in the 19th century, but Nielsen’s performance had a twist. Inspired by a mysterious American’s quirky book, Nielsen decided to make a version of Hamlet where the lead character was born a woman, a fact that was kept secret from nearly all of the play’s characters for her entire life. We talk about this film and Nielsen’s remarkable career with Pamela Hutchinson, a writer and film historian who recently curated the British Film Institute’s Asta Nielsen film festival about Nielsen’s Hamlet. Pamela Hutchinson is a freelance writer, film historian, and curator. You can read her film writing in Sight & Sound, Criterion, and in The Guardian. She’s a regular on BBC radio. Her website, devoted to silent films, is Silent London, at silentlondon.co.uk. Visit the British Film Institute’s website at bfi.org.uk for information about their recently concluded Asta Nielsen film festival. Find Hamlet and more of Nielsen's films on the Danish Film Institute's website, stumfilm.dk. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published April 12, 2022. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “What Woman Then?,” was produced by Richard Paul. 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 Andrew Feliciano at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Ali Gavan at Brighton Road Recording Studios in South Downs National Park, West Sussex, England.

How the Commedia Dell'Arte's Actresses Changed the Shakespearean Stage, with Pamela Allen Brown Mar 29, 2022

Show notes

English women didn’t act on London’s professional stages until the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. But Dr. Pamela Allen Brown, author of The Diva's Gift to the Shakespearean Stage, argues that star actresses from Italy altered both plays and playing despite this fact, a process that began in the 1570s, when commedia dell’arte troupes first set foot in London. Those Italian troupes featured something radically new and controversial: “divine” actresses who played the lead innamorata in vehicles and star scenes that spanned genres. After English diplomats and travelers to the Continent encountered this novelty in the 1570s, a few commedia troupes crossed the Channel to play for Elizabeth and for popular audiences, bringing actresses with them. And, Professor Brown says, the Italians’ creativity and materials and the diva’s fame and skill spurred writers to generate Italianate plays featuring strong-willed, theatrically brilliant foreign women, played by boys. In the long run, this revolution in playing widened the horizons of drama and regendered the stage. Pamela Allen Brown is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Pamela Allen Brown is a Professor of English at the University of Connecticut at Stamford. Her previous books include Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England, published by Cornell University Press in 2003, and Women Players in Early Modern England: Beyond the All-Male Stage, which she co-edited with Peter Parolin. That was published by Ashgate in 2005. Her new book, The Diva's Gift to the Shakespearean Stage, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published March 29, 2022. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “I Shall See Some Squeaking Cleopatra Boy My Greatness,” was produced by Richard Paul. 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 Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Josh Wilcox and Walter Nordquist at Brooklyn Podcasting Studio in Brooklyn, New York.

Matías Piñeiro on His Shakespeare-Adjacent Films Mar 15, 2022

Show notes

An Argentine woman translates "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" while incessantly taping travel postcards to a wall. An actress in Buenos Aires seduces her colleague while rehearsing a scene for "Twelfth Night." A theater troupe flirts its way through rehearsals of "As You Like It" in an Argentine forest. If you’re noticing a pattern here, you’re not mistaken. These scenes all come from the films of Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro. Born in Buenos Aires and now living in New York, Piñeiro has developed a cycle of six beautifully-filmed movies he calls “The Shakespeare Reads,” all of which are based around the female roles in Shakespeare’s comedies. Piñeiro talks with Barbara Bogaev about his unique approach to his work and his craft. Matías Piñeiro is a screenwriter, director, and filmmaker. The six films in his “The Shakespeare Reads” series are "Rosalinda," "Viola," "The Princess of France," "Hermia & Helena," "Isabella," and the short film "Sycorax." Stream all of these films on MUBI, or buy them on Blu-ray and DVD from the Cinema Guild. Piñeiro teaches filmmaking at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute and coordinates the filmmaking department at the Elías Querejeta Film School in San Sebastián, Spain. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published Tuesday, March 15. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “To Play a Pleasant Comedy,” was produced by Richard Paul. 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 Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Josh Wilcox at Brooklyn Podcasting Studio in Brooklyn, New York.

Molly Yarn on Shakespeare's 'Lady Editors' Mar 01, 2022

Show notes

Over the centuries there have been hundreds of editions of Shakespeare’s plays: Small, inexpensive schoolbook copies of individual plays, massive, leatherbound editions of the complete works, and everything in between. At some point, every one of those editions passed under the eyes of an editor who decided which version of which disputed word would be included, how characters’ names would be spelled, whether a quarto’s version was the best to use here or maybe the version in the First Folio, and so on. While the names of the many of Shakespeare’s male editors are well-known, up until now there has been little to nothing written about another group of Shakespeare editors: Women, who—since the early 19th century—have labored editing Shakespeare in the shadows of men, sometimes getting no credit at all, and sometimes—as you’ll hear—only getting blame. While Molly Yarn was writing her doctoral thesis on women editing Shakespeare, she discovered almost seventy female editors of Shakespeare. Now, she’s written about them in a new book, Shakespeare’s “Lady Editors.” She talks with Barbara Bogaev about Elizabeth Inchbald, Laura Valentine, Charlotte Stopes, and their editorial sisters in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Dr. Molly G. Yarn, an independent scholar living in Athens, GeorgiA, is the author of Shakespeare’s ‘Lady Editors’: A New History of the Shakespearean Text. It was published by Cambridge University Press and released in the United States in 2022. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published March 1, 2022. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “A Woman's Voice May Do Some Good” was produced by Richard Paul. 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 Andrew Feliciano at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Andrew Feyer at Brooklyn Podcasting Studio in New York.

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