Kyle Downing (nyshakesguy) and various guests and co-hosts breakdown Shakespeare's plays, talk poetic elements, examine ridiculous hypotheticals and answer listener questions on this podcast.
Kyle and Abby talk Shakespeare's deepest platonic same-gender relationships that appear amidst his most passionate love stories. They also play a game called "I Knew Him, Horatio", and discuss Shakespeare monologues and plays that best represent the election results.
Kyle and Abby host the world's first Fantasy Shakespeare draft, in which they and four friends take turns picking the Shakespeare plays they think will be produced most often in the 2017-2018 regional theatre seasons.
On the 15th episode of Pith and Moment, Abby and Kyle talk Deus Ex Machina in Shakespeare, and whether or not the label is useful. They also find out which Shakespeare plays have the most swearing, and discuss a rhetorical device called Pysma. Plus, which Shakespeare plays could benefit from the addition of robots?
Kyle Downing and Abby Wilde talk about the theme of fate in Richard III, Macbeth and Julius Caesar, and whether there are any similarities with the prophecies and curses across all three plays. They discuss a rhetorical device called Epizeuxis and an Old West-themed Macbeth. Kyle uses Open Source Shakespeare to find out which young male lovers use romance words most frequently in their speech.
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, Abby Wilde joins Kyle Downing on the podcast to talk about Shakespeare's heroines, and what exactly makes them different from his ingenues. They also discuss Shakespeare's bloodiest works, and play a trivia game based around the 400th line in 10 different Shakespeare plays.
Kyle and Mike host special guest Martine Kei Green-Rogers, a dramaturg working on Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play On! project. Martine divulges some inside information about the controversial Shakespeare translations, and the three of them discuss the potential effects on the community and general Shakespeare education. Other shenanigans include discussion of an inverted Richard III production where all the other characters have disabilities instead, and an exploration of a rhetorical device called hypophora.
On the 11th episode, Kyle Downing and his graduate school classmate Mike Thatcher talk about A Midsummer Night's Dream and all its episodic elements. They discuss what the play might be like if all the characters were on different drugs, and discuss the significance of Puck's casting to the play. For more nerdy fun, they take a look at which words appear more often in different eras of Shakespeare's career.
On the tenth episode of Pith and Moment, Rebekah Scallet joins Kyle Downing to talk about the issues with the final scene of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as well as a few other interesting scenes and devices within the play. They also discuss the poetic and rhetorical effects of chiasmus. Rebekah plays a game in which she tries to identify Shakespeare plays based on animal references within them.
On episode 9, Titan Theatre Co. Artistic Director Lenny Banovez joins Kyle Downing to talk about his recent all-female production of Othello. They also discuss the effects of anthimeria (creatively changing a word's part of speech), and discuss what Othello might be like if the title character were 18 years old.
On the eighth episode of Pith and Moment, Amelia Fischer joins Kyle Downing to talk about her production of Much Ado About Nothing set in 1840s Texas. They also play a Shakespeare-themed game of Pyramid, discuss the implications of a gender-reversed As You Like It, and wonder about the effects of metonymy and synecdoche in Shakespeare's text.
On the 7th episode of Pith and Moment, Kyle Downing and Parke Fech talk Comedy of Errors, and the effects of having four actors playing the four twin roles vs. having two actors each play one set of twins. They also play a game called "O, I am slain", and hypothesize about what Shakespeare's work would be like if he had written in anapestic tetrameter.
On the sixth episode of Pith and Moment, Kyle Downing and Elena Robertson discuss Richard II and all its quirks, including why the whole play is written in verse and why the last act is written entirely in rhyming couplets. Elena also plays a game in which she attempts to guess Shakespeare plays based on the names of their characters.
On the fifth episode of Pith and Moment, Kyle Downing talks with Christopher Owens about All's Well That Ends Well. Christopher offers his insight about challenges in casting and directing the play, including the problematic ending. They also play a game of "Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness", in which Christopher attempts to identify Shakespearean characters by their fake identities in their respective plays.
Kyle and Gillian talk about Shakespeare's kings and what effect humanizing a king might have had on Shakespeare's audience. They also analyze the effects of hyperbaton as a rhetorical device, and wonder what Romeo and Juliet might have been like if the characters had fought with flails. And then there's a rousing game of Famous Last Words.
Kyle Downing and David Anthony Smith talk David's recent roles in The Tempest and King Lear with Idaho Shakespeare Festival/Great Lakes Theater. David gives his input on bomphologia and onomatopoetic speaking.
On episode 2 of the Pith and Moment podcast, Kyle and Jasmine talk about Shakespeare's foils, and how effective they are as a device. They also talk about Anaphora and how actors can use it as a tool.
In the first episode of the Pith and Moment podcast, Sara Becker and I take a deep look into the scenes and characters of Hamlet. We also talk about audition material from the play, and answer a few listener questions about Shakespeare's greatest play.
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