Such Stuff: The Shakespeare's Globe Podcast

In this episode of the podcast, we get into the spirit of the spooky month and take a deep dive into the world of ghost stories, with frights, thrills and things that go bump in the night. As part of our new festival examining Shakespeare and Fear, self-confessed horror fans Michelle Terry and Paul Ready delve into what makes a ghost story scary, why we continue to tell them and what is unique about the ghosts in Shakespeare’s plays. 

In the final episode of our series on Shakespeare and Race, we take a closer look at the question that has underpinned the entire series: how do we decolonise the works of Shakespeare? We hear myriad suggestions and ideas from contributors from across the series – actors, academics and students. And we return to festival co-curators Michelle Terry (Artistic Director) and Professor Farah Karim-Cooper (Head of Higher Education and Research) to reflect on the festival and to ask what next for making decolonisation a reality at Shakespeare’s Globe and beyond. This episode also features a special reading from festival co-curator Kobna Holdbrook-Smith of James Baldwin’s Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare.  

In the fourth episode in our series on Shakespeare and Race, we turn to the theatre industry to examine how whiteness has dominated – and continues to dominate – our theatres, from the work that we stage to the people who make up our organisations. We spoke to Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Jade Anouka, Adjoa Andoh, Sarah Amankwah and Federay Holmes, who reflected on some of their experiences across the theatre industry, discussed the particular knottiness of Shakespeare and asked what work needs to be done to make theatres and rehearsal rooms actively anti-racist.  

In the third episode of our series on Shakespeare and Race, we look at our education system and the way that we’re teaching the next generation. The way we teach and the way we learn shapes the way we understand the world. If that education is permeated with this idea that whiteness is the norm, and everything else is the other, that is what we take out into the world. And when it comes to Shakespeare, it means generations are brought up with a narrow set of ideas about what Shakespeare’s plays mean, who they are for and why they matter. More and more, across schools, universities and drama schools, we are hearing calls to decolonise the curriculum. In this episode, we’ll be exploring what that means and what a decolonised curriculum might look like. And of course, we’ll be asking what that means for the way we learn the works of Shakespeare. We chat to playwright and founder of the Diversity School, Steven Kavuma, about his experiences of drama school education. And we talk to Dr Shona Hunter about how whiteness dominates the educational context.  

In the second episode in our series on Shakespeare and Race, we take a closer look at the way that whiteness has dominated the way we read Shakespeare, from the first moment we pick up a Shakespeare play. For too long, ways of looking at Shakespeare have been dominated by a concern with whiteness, but one that goes unacknowledged. For those who study Shakespeare’s work, this has marginalised the voices, concerns and interests of scholars of colour. If we are reading Shakespeare in narrow ways, do we also teach Shakespeare from these same narrow perspectives? And do we pass the same narrow concerns onto another generations of Shakespeare readers and scholars? We speak to Dr Ambereen Dadabhoy and Dr Ruben Espinosa about their work, as well as four students - Hassana Moosa, Wendy Lennon, Nour El Gazzaz and Shani Bans – who are currently studying for PhD’s, to find out how and why whiteness continues to pervade the way we read Shakespeare.  

With the theatre closed, we take a moment to ask: when we reopen, should we really go back to business as usual? We don’t just want to pay lip service to Black Lives Matter and then move on without making any real changes to the way we operate as an organisation. It is not enough to stand against racism in theory, we need to be actively anti-racist. This is the first in a series of episodes dedicated to Shakespeare and race, specifically Shakespeare and anti-racism. So, we’ll be asking what if we looked at the world – our own world, the world of theatre and the world of Shakespeare – through whiteness? The way we talk about race is so often couched in ‘otherness’, in putting labels on groups based on difference; but different to what, other to what? In this episode we will be unpicking what that term whiteness means, speaking to sociologist Dr Steve Garner. And over the course of the next few episodes we will look in depth at the way we read Shakespeare, the way we educate students in classrooms, lecture halls and rehearsal rooms and the way we operate our stages through this presumption that whiteness is somehow the norm. 

This week on the podcast, we bring you another episode of the Shakespeare diaries. Our very own actor artistic director Michelle Terry and actor Paul Ready discuss Shakespeare’s plays from isolation. This week, they revisited Love’s Labour’s Lost, the first production they were ever in together, and on our very own Globe stage. Prompted by questions from our audience, Michelle and Paul discussed why it’s Michelle’s favourite play, how Shakespeare once again marries joy and melancholy and why it’s such an anarchic play. 

This week on the podcast, we return to the Shakespeare diaries. Our very own actor artistic director Michelle Terry and actor Paul Ready discuss Shakespeare’s plays from isolation. This week, they discuss As You Like It. With questions sent in by our audience, Michelle and Paul consider why Rosalind and Celia’s relationship is so central to the play, why audiences seem to love Rosalind so much and why this bonkers play is one of their most beloved! 

This week on the podcast, the Shakespeare diaries returns. Our very own actor artistic director Michelle Terry and actor Paul Ready discuss Shakespeare’s plays from isolation. This week, just in time for the summer solstice, they turn to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. With questions sent in by our audience, Michelle and Paul consider the epic scope of this play, from climate change and chaos in the cosmos, to the relationship between jealousy and power, and the pervasive idea of capture that spans the play. 

This week on the podcast, we take a moment of reflection. As the future of theatre is in question, we take inspiration from the Globe’s past. What does this rich history of reinvention, of imagination and an enduring determination to tell stories mean to us today? And how do we move into the future when theatre may never be the same again? We asked members of the Globe family far and wide to reflect with us, building an audio time capsule of the Globe and what it means to them. This episode celebrates memory: of people, places and things and how in the act of remembrance, we begin to slowly stitch ourselves back together and look to the future with all the promise and hope of rebirth and renewal.