Such Stuff: The Shakespeare's Globe Podcast

In this episode of Such Stuff, we tackle the aura of inaccessibility around Shakespeare, and the preconceptions that the plays are too hard, irrelevant or elitist, asking our guests: who is Shakespeare for? We chat to Darren Raymond, artistic director of Intermission Theatre, whose own experiences around Shakespeare persuaded him to use Shakespeare in the Intermission Youth Theatre programme to get kids to devise work around both the plays and the issues affecting their own lives. We catch up with a group of teenagers who came to see our Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank production of Romeo and Juliet in the Globe Theatre about what they can and can’t relate to in the play. And actor Lewis Bray tells us about approaching Shakespeare with dyslexia, and how hip hop helped him to unlock the text.

In this episode of Such Stuff, as the country is in the midst of political paralysis and constitutional crisis over Brexit, we take this moment to look backwards to Shakespeare’s moment and beyond, and forwards to an unknown future, to ask: what is ‘this sceptred isle’? 

Over the course of this year, Shakespeare's Globe will present a cycle of Shakespeare’s History Plays. What do these plays say about who we are as a nation? And more importantly, who we want to be? What role does art and theatre have to play in challenging the way society looks and reflecting the country we might want to live in? 

We speak to the co-director and star of Richard II, Adjoa Andoh, about the significance of this production, the first ever all women of colour Shakespeare production on a major UK stage, and how the way they’re presenting the show re-examines what – and who – this England, this ‘sceptred isle’, might represent…

We chat to our artistic director Michelle Terry about about that relationship between past and present in the Globe Theatre at this moment in our history. 

And we catch up with members of our Globe Ensemble, who will be presenting Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V on the Globe stage this summer, about the particular version of an English past that the history plays are often associated with, and how you go about examining them with fresh eyes.

In this episode of Such Stuff, we celebrate International Women’s Day. Taking a look at our own work, and a wider look across the industry, we talk to brilliant women from across the theatre industry and ask: how far has theatre come in the drive for equality and inclusion, and how much further do we have to go? And what is it, right now – on and off our stages – that give us hope that by International Women’s Day next year, we will have pushed the conversation even further… We hear from playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, who just won the Susan Smith Blackburn prize, the oldest playwriting prize in the world with an all-female shortlist; Clare Perkins, who is returning to the role of Emilia in the West End, talks inspiring women and changing the world one play at a time; fight director Yarit Dor talks us through a career in a discipline that was until recently seen as typically masculine territory; Dr Farah Karim-Cooper, our Head of Higher Education and Research, takes us through the upcoming festival Women and Power, and why we need it now. And our very own artistic director Michelle Terry, talks about the huge structural changes we need across the industry, and how we’re getting the ball rolling here at Shakespeare’s Globe.

In this episode of Such Stuff, we go behind the scenes with Romeo and Juliet. A Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank production, this fast-paced 90-minute version is designed with a teenage audience in mind. Over four weeks, around 25,000 school children will see the production, and over 18,000 of them for free. 

We go behind the scenes with director Michael Oakley, and actors Nathan Welsh and Charlotte Beaumont who are playing Romeo and Juliet, to ask: is there such a thing as making Shakespeare ‘relevant’ to young people? Why should Shakespeare be seen and performed, and not just read? And are love and hate two sides of the same coin? We also catch up with some of our future audience members, teenagers who will be coming to see Romeo and Juliet, to see what they think of Shakespeare and what they expect from the show.

In this episode of Such Stuff, we go behind the scenes with the Pride, Then and Now festival, asking how we perform sexuality, and how sexuality is performed, shining a light on queer narratives from the early modern period too often overlooked. Writer and actor Tom Stuart talks about his new play After Edward, a response to Marlowe’s Edward II, in which he is also playing the titular role. Globe Research Fellow Dr Will Tosh delves into the life of Christopher Marlowe, and other writers from the period whose work touches on queer themes. And we chat to curator Sarah Grange and drag king Wesley Dykes, two of the team behind Moll and the Future Kings, an improv drag king cabaret by candlelight in our very own Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. They tell us about the extraordinary life of 17th century cross-dressing criminal Moll Frith. Plus, poems from early modern writers Richard Barnfield and Katherine Philips.

Our new Associate Artistic Director, Sean Holmes, joins us on the podcast to share his relationship and previous experiences with Shakespeare over the past two decades in theatre. We hear more about how these experience will shape his experimental work with the Globe’s Ensemble in our unique theatrical spaces.

In the first episode of Season 2 of Such Stuff, we go behind the scenes with Dark Night of the Soul, a festival of new writing from a collective of women writers who are taking on the myth of the Faustian bargain from a fresh and feminine perspective. 

So, this week on the podcast, we'll also be asking: 'what would you sell your soul for?'

We talk to writers Lily Bevan, Katie Hims, Athena Stevens, Amanda Wilkin, Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence about how they went about asking and answering the question, and we put the women of the Globe on the spot and ask them what they'd sell their souls for.

It’s Christmas at the Globe! To get into the festive spirit, we travel back in time with Dr Will Tosh to the frosty winter of 1607/8, when the river Thames froze solid. As midwinter approaches, we’ve retreated into the warm glow of candlelight. We head backstage in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse with Cleo, our Candle Technician, to find out how we get through hundreds of candles a day. Finally, we’ve been digging around the archives to find you a festive poem from Jacobean England.

It’s Halloween at the Globe! We searched the Globe high and low for all things superstitious and spooky… We go behind the scenes with the upcoming production of Macbeth, chatting to director Rob Hastie about witches, superstitions and saying the name of the Scottish Play. 

We go Globe ghost hunting with Access Manager David Bellwood, and discover incredible ghost stories and urban legends, old and new, from the Globe and beyond. 

Prosthetics artist Suzi Battersby tells us how to make a severed head, and about the weirdest prosthetic prop she’s ever made for theatre.