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.

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...

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 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...

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...

In this episode, we go behind the scenes with Notes to the Forgotten She-Wolves (https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/forgotten-she-wolves/) , a special series of events (https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/seasons/voices-in-the-dark/) 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...

It’s Christmas at the (Snow) Globe! It’s that time of year again: the frost is settling on the thatched roof, the decorations have gone up… and all the joy of a Danish family Christmas is about to arrive at the Globe. We caught up with Sandi and Jenifer Toksvig to find out more about their very special show, Christmas at the (Snow) Globe, where audiences will have to help our merry gang find the stolen magic of Christmas, and return it to the Globe…  We also travel back in time with Dr Will...

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...

As Brexit rumbles on to an uncertain end, we take a look back at the theatrical experiment we’ve been running alongside the country’s political one, to stage Shakespeare’s cycle of history plays, with their all-too familiar political turmoil, ambitious personalities and treacherous behaviour. We revisit interviews with some of our Henriad companies broadcast earlier in the season; in particular, the women of colour who have brought fresh voices to these stories and roles, bringing to life new...

For centuries, Bartholomew Fair was held on the 24 August in the heart of London, and people flocked to the notorious streets of Smithfield for the fair, famous for its lawlessness, depravity and general merriment. Ben Jonson’s play Bartholomew Fair brings a cast of characters from across London together in a snapshot of London life. But the raucous comedy has a dark side, and its exploration of class, social standing and just deserts has as much to say now as it did then. It’s about to land...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play we come back to again and again, the irreverent story of lovers, royalty, fairies and actors crossing paths in a forest outside Athens is full of riotous comedy and lilting poetry, bringing midsummer madness to life. But like all Shakespeare plays, underneath the frothing fun is a dark underbelly. So, this week on the podcast, we go behind the scenes with our company and ask: what’s the dark side to Shakespeare’s comedies? Is Shakespeare misogynistic? And...

In an age of political antagonism and, all too often, despair, is being optimistic and hopeful about the future a truly radical act? Shakespeare’s comedies throw their protagonists into confusion, despair and any number of hilarious hare-brained incidents. In true Shakespearean style, as much as there is comedy, darkness is never too far from the surface. But it all comes right in the end. We sat down with the Globe’s Associate Artistic Director to ask what his idea of ‘radical optimism’...

This week on the podcast we chat disability and performance, asking how we increase representation on our stages, taking a look at the characters and parts we see – and often, don’t see – performed, and asking whether theatre should act as a mirror, to see yourself in, or a window, to see someone else’s view on the world. We’re joined by actor and campaigner Nadia Albina, actor, performer and researcher Jessi Parrott and actor, performer and comedian Dougie Walker.

This week on the podcast we celebrate the particular fascination of Poland with Shakespeare, exploring how Polish artists have appreciated, performed and played with Shakespeare’s work, and none more so than the renowned Polish playwright, artist, director and craftsman Stanisław Wyspiański. It’s sometimes too easy to think of Shakespeare as being particularly English, and to have a set idea about how the plays should be performed. So, this week on the podcast, we’ll be asking what is the...

To celebrate World Refugee Day, we catch up with some of the extraordinary artists who have joined us here at Shakespeare’s Globe for Refugee Week.  Refugee Week happens in the UK every year around World Refugee Day, and is brought together by Counterpoint Arts.  We chat to our Refugee Week artist in residence Sabrina Richmond and American director, artist and educator Madeline Sayet. We ask: what can art offer when it comes to telling the stories of lived experience of displacement and...

Sam Wanamaker was an American actor and director, and the visionary behind Shakespeare’s Globe. He founded the Globe project in 1970, and worked tirelessly for decades against setbacks, funding struggles and court cases to build the Globe theatre we sit in today.     In the run up to the centenary of Sam’s birth, we chat to our Director of Education Patrick Spottiswoode – who has been part of the Globe team since 1984 – about Sam’s remarkable story. 

In the first episode of Season 3 of Such Stuff, we go behind the scenes with the Women and Power festival. As women take to the Globe stage to play the traditionally male roles of King Henry V, Falstaff and Hotspur, we ask what the relationship is between women and power. What does it mean to occupy spaces and roles that have been predominantly male and predominantly white? How can the voices that came before us inspire us moving forwards? Is there a backlash to the progress we’ve made? And...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.