Nov 18, 2019
Who can forget the timeless moments in Shakespeare’s plays, such as Hamlet’s encounter with the Ghost, Beatrice and Benedick’s playful sparring, or the happy ending to King Lear? If that last example doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because it’s from a different version of the famous tragedy, one that comes from...
Nov 18, 2019
Popular culture has largely forgotten about the freak show – or has it? The display of so-called “freaks,” human beings with bodies that were perceived as drastically different from what was considered “normal,” was once an incredibly popular form of public entertainment, but one which we now look back on...
Nov 18, 2019
Mary Ann Yates is the best actress whom you’ve never heard of. That’s how Dr. Elaine McGirr characterizes this fascinating woman, who rose to stardom on the eighteenth-century British stage and later went on to become the first female manager of a major London theatre. As Elaine explains in this episode, Yates’s...
Nov 18, 2019
If you’ve ever tried to get permission to perform a play, you’ve probably encountered some issues having to do with theatrical copyright. But where did the concept of copyrighting theatrical works come from? What do the legal wrangles over who owns the rights to a performance say about the nature of theatre?
Nov 18, 2019
How do you depict pregnancy onstage when your cast is all-male? That was one of a number of problems that English playwrights and performers faced in the Stuart era, when plays like The Winter’s Tale frequently began to feature pregnancies as major plot points. Dr. Sara BT Thiel has been exploring this subject, and...