Such Stuff: The Shakespeare's Globe Podcast

This week on the podcast, we return to the question of Shakespeare and Race. Professor Farah Karim-Cooper is joined by Professor Ayanna Thompson and Dr Noémie Ndiaye to discuss their work across Shakespeare studies and race studies, including the relationship between the history of blackface minstrelsy and Shakespeare, and early modern techniques of performing blackness and the part it played in the race struggle in early modern Europe. They also look to the future of studying race in relation to Shakespeare and his contemporaries and how they are working to move the field forwards. 

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by special guest Maggie O’Farrell. The author of eight novels, plus the Sunday Time no. 1 best-selling memoir I am, I am, I am, she has been nominated for the Costa Novel Award three times, winning it for The Hand That First Held Mine. Her new book – Hamnet – is set in the summer of 1596 and imagines the story behind one of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies and its connection to Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet. It’s a stunning novel and a tender story of love and grief that shifts the focus to the family that Shakespeare left behind in Stratford when he moved to London to become the playwright we know today. We spoke to Maggie about how she researched the story and how she approached the daunting prospect of writing about such a well-known figure as Shakespeare. This episode features an extract from Hamnet, read by Maggie O’Farrell.

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 delve into Much Ado About Nothing. With questions contributed by our audiences, Michelle and Paul discuss Beatrice and Benedick, why they’re such a relatable pairing, the importance of prose in the play and how Shakespeare casts shadow and pain into this riotous, much loved comedy.

This week on the podcast we introduce Shakespeare’s Globe’s new project: Love in Isolation. Love in Isolation will see an extraordinary array of artists share some of Shakespeare’s greatest words from their place of isolation. To mark the launch of the new project, Michelle spoke to renowned director Peter Brook about Shakespeare’s sonnets. They discussed the unique insight into Shakespeare that the sonnets provide and how the idea of love permeates all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets. This episode also includes performances from actress Kathryn Hunter.   

The first in a new feature on the podcast, The Shakespeare Diaries follows our very own artistic director and actor Michelle Terry and actor Paul Ready as they discuss Shakespeare’s plays from isolation. Up first, Macbeth. They starred as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in a production in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe last winter. Here, they discuss superstition and conjuring, how they approach performing Shakespeare’s characters and questions of ambition, guilt and culpability.

Ahead of our new series of Such Stuff, specially created in light of recent circumstances, a message from our Artistic Director Michelle Terry on coping with this brave new world and explaining how we’ll be staying in touch with our audiences.

In the first episode of a new series specially created in light of recent circumstances, we travel back in time to 1999 to Padua High School, Seattle, to explore the wonderful world of iconic teen film 10 Things I Hate About You. It’s 21 years to the day since it was first released. So, we’ll be asking: does transposing The Taming of the Shrew to an American high school work? How has the film dated? And how does one of Shakespeare’s most difficult plays transform into a romance that left the best part of a generation besotted with Heath Ledger? Watch the film too and let us know what you make of 10 Things I Hate About You.

In this episode we celebrate International Women’s Day. We catch up with women both on and off our stages, to see how they’re championing stories which centre on women’s experiences. We’ll be asking how we can put more women’s stories centre stage, and how we can create conversations both within our industry and beyond it, to move the conversation forwards, build on our successes and ensure everyone can share their stories? We’re joined by Lorien Haynes, Amy Hodge, Thalissa Teixteira and women who work across Shakespeare’s Globe.  

CW: sexual assault, rape and abuse.  

In this episode, we go behind the scenes with our Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank production of Macbeth. Created especially for teenagers, it’s a fast-paced and political 90-minute version of the play, and 20,000 free tickets are given to state school students. With thousands of young people coming through our doors, we ask how Shakespeare can help have a conversation across the generations, with voices from the past, resonances from the present and questions for the future. How can Shakespeare help young people understand and change the world we live in and the world we’re passing on to them? 

In this episode, we go behind the scenes with Notes to the Forgotten She-Wolves, a special series of events honouring women and non-binary people from history who have been forgotten, misremembered or erased.  

We chat to Producer Matilda James and Literary Manager Jessica Lusk about commissioning the twenty writers who have dedicated notes to these women. And we chat to three of the writers – Janet Le Lacheur, Amanda Wilkin and Philippa Gregory – about the women they’ve chosen and what it means to give them their voices back.  

We’ll also be asking: why are these stories still so resonant today, what does it mean to create a new collective of voices, and how does resurrecting the past help us to see our futures clearly? 

#VoicesInTheDark