Such Stuff: The Shakespeare's Globe Podcast

In the last episode in our series on arts and wellbeing, we explore the question of creativity. Creativity has come up again and again in this series, as a way of expressing ourselves, but also as a way of managing the thoughts and the periods in our life which can feel overwhelming. Why is exercising our creative brain such a helpful way of taking ourselves out of negative thought processes? How can all of us – even if we don’t think we’re particularly creative people – use creativity to feel better? We speak to our literary manager Jess Lusk about her relationship to that crucial connection between creativity and mental health. And she chats to actor and writer Steffan Donnelly and our associate artistic director Sean Holmes to get their ideas on why creativity matters, and to hear some of the ways they’ve kept their creativity alive this year, whilst they’ve been unable to work.  This episode does contain discussion of mental health issues, anxiety, depression and suicide.  

In the latest episode of our series on arts and wellbeing, we catch up with some of the creatives and scholars in our Globe network to find out about the inspirations that have helped them through this period and why the arts provide such a vital lifeline. Without the opportunity to go out and experience the arts in person, we’ve been turning inwards, to books, televisions, films, plays and paintings. How can inspirations help to find escape in difficult periods? Or bring comfort in moments of crisis? We hear from actor and writer Tom Stuart in conversation with our literary manager Jess Lusk. And lecturer and senior researcher Dr Will Tosh speaks to actor, storyteller, writer and Globe Education Practitioner Alex Kanefsky, and Shakespeare scholar Dr Vanessa Lim.   This episode does contain discussion of mental health issues. 

In the latest episode of our series on arts and wellbeing, we turn to the question of connection. What are the connections that arts spaces can bring and how can that impact our mental health? And for theatre in particular, how important is the moment of connection, the shared experience, that comes from spending an evening with an audience of strangers? We chat to Jemima and Alistair, two of the wonderful Globe volunteers, about why they volunteer, how it impacts them, and why they think connection is so important for wellbeing. Performances at the Globe can only happen thanks to the extraordinary contribution of our eclectic, committed and joyful volunteers. Every season, they watch countless performances and meet so many of the audience members who come through our doors. Who better to speak on the elusive but extraordinary power of connection?  This episode does contain discussion of mental health issues and anxiety. 

In this second episode in our series on the connection between the arts and wellbeing, we dig a little deeper into expression and vulnerability. Whilst watching or engaging in the arts and creativity can offer an incredible release, the process can also be very exposing. After a year of isolation with limited outward expression, how do we move back into the world and what lessons might we learn from the performing arts and artistic practices in making this transition?  Director Sarah Bedi and drama therapist Annemarie Gaillard share their experiences of working in rehearsal rooms, and especially with young actors, to facilitate nourishing creative experiences. We’ll be asking, what are the benefits but also anxieties of being vulnerable? How can we build safe spaces in the performing arts? And how can all of us learn from creative practices to reach out after this period of isolation, to find expression through the arts, whilst also taking proper care of ourselves?  This episode does contain discussion of mental health issues and anxiety. 

In a new series dedicated to the connection between the arts and wellbeing, we explore the many ways in which the arts enrich our lives. As we head out of lockdown and back into our beautiful theatres, what role can the arts and theatre play in helping us to tackle mental health issues, in restoring wellbeing, and to help us find expression and connection again after a year of isolation? We’ll be speaking to drama therapists, to psychologists, to artists and creatives, to dig deeper into the links between the arts and wellbeing and to think about some of the practical ways that the arts can play a part in a sort of collective healing.  First up, in this episode, Artistic Director Michelle Terry speaks to psychotherapist Rachael Williams about how creativity, vulnerability, and engaging with the arts can help us to work through the mental health problems we experience.  This episode contains discussion of mental health, anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide. 

This month, we’ve been celebrating LGBTQ+ History Month. In this episode, our head of learning and former drama teacher Lucy Cuthbertson explores the importance of creating a positive environment in schools for LGBTQ+ students and staff. Lucy speaks to eight former students about their experiences of being LGBTQ+ in school and how important drama was as a safe space to explore. They also discuss why role models in school and representation in the curriculum matter so much. Plus, Lucy chats to Dr Elly Barnes about the work her charity Educate & Celebrate is doing in schools. Lucy and Elly have both been working in educational spaces as educators, as teachers, as activists and as champions of LGBTQ+ rights for years, and together they reflect on how far we’ve come and what else schools can be doing to be LGBTQ+ inclusive. 

In our final episode of the year, some of the wonderful Such Stuff team offer up festive readings, poems and stories that bring joy and contemplation at this time of year. We’re calling it out very own Such Stuff Christmas Cracker Bonanza; pull the cracker, and who knows what you’ll find inside? We hear from actor Paul Ready, lecturer and research fellow Dr Will Tosh, multimedia production officer Sophie Wells and artistic director Michelle Terry.  

In our second advent episode, we turn to a snowy story from the history of the Globe theatre, our very own Christmas miracle. In the icy winter of 1598, a theatre was dismantled on the north side of the river, the timbers rolled through the snowy streets of London, and the Globe theatre was born on the south side of the river. But what really happened that wintery night between Christmas and New Year in 1598? Was the Globe really built in a day? Our very own historical Scrooge Dr Will Tosh does some all-important myth busting with artistic director and ardent miracle-believer Michelle Terry. The resulting story we uncover might be a little less flamboyant… but maybe, just maybe, it’s no less magical.

With the festive season upon us, we dedicate the first of our advent offerings on Such Stuff to that great theatrical festive tradition... panto! With artists and theatre makers Jenifer Toksvig, Ess Grange, Jude Christian and our artistic director Michelle Terry, we delve into the rich history and contemporary stylings of panto, including our very own festive show, Christmas at the (Snow Globe). So, we’ll be reminiscing about pantos of Christmas past, discussing the joys and pitfalls of tradition and thinking about why this communal form of theatre is so important, in this year of all years. Oh no it isn’t... oh yes it is! 

In this episode, we return to the subject of Shakespeare and Fear, unpicking the relationship between our very real fears and anxieties and our obsession with ghost stories, hauntings and imaginary terrors.   As part of our digital festival exploring the subject, our 2018 production of Macbeth returns to the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse as Macbeth: A Conjuring, a semi-staged reading. So, we revisited interviews with director Rob Hastie and actors Michelle Terry and Paul Ready on conjuring, superstition and catharsis. And we caught up with Dr Will Tosh to discuss the uncanny resonances between today’s fearful state of affairs and the bitter winter in which Shakespeare wrote Macbeth. 

In this episode of the podcast, we get into the spirit of the spooky month and take a deep dive into the world of ghost stories, with frights, thrills and things that go bump in the night. As part of our new festival examining Shakespeare and Fear, self-confessed horror fans Michelle Terry and Paul Ready delve into what makes a ghost story scary, why we continue to tell them and what is unique about the ghosts in Shakespeare’s plays. 

In the final episode of our series on Shakespeare and Race, we take a closer look at the question that has underpinned the entire series: how do we decolonise the works of Shakespeare? We hear myriad suggestions and ideas from contributors from across the series – actors, academics and students. And we return to festival co-curators Michelle Terry (Artistic Director) and Professor Farah Karim-Cooper (Head of Higher Education and Research) to reflect on the festival and to ask what next for making decolonisation a reality at Shakespeare’s Globe and beyond. This episode also features a special reading from festival co-curator Kobna Holdbrook-Smith of James Baldwin’s Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare.  

In the fourth episode in our series on Shakespeare and Race, we turn to the theatre industry to examine how whiteness has dominated – and continues to dominate – our theatres, from the work that we stage to the people who make up our organisations. We spoke to Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Jade Anouka, Adjoa Andoh, Sarah Amankwah and Federay Holmes, who reflected on some of their experiences across the theatre industry, discussed the particular knottiness of Shakespeare and asked what work needs to be done to make theatres and rehearsal rooms actively anti-racist.  

In the third episode of our series on Shakespeare and Race, we look at our education system and the way that we’re teaching the next generation. The way we teach and the way we learn shapes the way we understand the world. If that education is permeated with this idea that whiteness is the norm, and everything else is the other, that is what we take out into the world. And when it comes to Shakespeare, it means generations are brought up with a narrow set of ideas about what Shakespeare’s plays mean, who they are for and why they matter. More and more, across schools, universities and drama schools, we are hearing calls to decolonise the curriculum. In this episode, we’ll be exploring what that means and what a decolonised curriculum might look like. And of course, we’ll be asking what that means for the way we learn the works of Shakespeare. We chat to playwright and founder of the Diversity School, Steven Kavuma, about his experiences of drama school education. And we talk to Dr Shona Hunter about how whiteness dominates the educational context.  

In the second episode in our series on Shakespeare and Race, we take a closer look at the way that Whiteness has dominated the way we read Shakespeare, from the first moment we pick up a Shakespeare play. For too long, ways of looking at Shakespeare have been dominated by a concern with Whiteness, but one that goes unacknowledged. For those who study Shakespeare’s work, this has marginalised the voices, concerns and interests of scholars of colour. If we are reading Shakespeare in narrow ways, do we also teach Shakespeare from these same narrow perspectives? And do we pass the same narrow concerns onto another generations of Shakespeare readers and scholars? We speak to Dr Ambereen Dadabhoy and Dr Ruben Espinosa about their work, as well as four students - Hassana Moosa, Wendy Lennon, Nour El Gazzaz and Shani Bans – who are currently studying for PhD’s, to find out how and why Whiteness continues to pervade the way we read Shakespeare.  

With the theatre closed, we take a moment to ask: when we reopen, should we really go back to business as usual? We don’t just want to pay lip service to Black Lives Matter and then move on without making any real changes to the way we operate as an organisation. It is not enough to stand against racism in theory, we need to be actively anti-racist. This is the first in a series of episodes dedicated to Shakespeare and race, specifically Shakespeare and anti-racism. So, we’ll be asking what if we looked at the world – our own world, the world of theatre and the world of Shakespeare – through Whiteness? The way we talk about race is so often couched in ‘otherness’, in putting labels on groups based on difference; but different to what, other to what? In this episode we will be unpicking what that term Whiteness means, speaking to sociologist Dr Steve Garner. And over the course of the next few episodes we will look in depth at the way we read Shakespeare, the way we educate students in classrooms, lecture halls and rehearsal rooms and the way we operate our stages through this presumption that Whiteness is somehow the norm. 

This week on the podcast, we bring you another episode of the Shakespeare diaries. Our very own actor artistic director Michelle Terry and actor Paul Ready discuss Shakespeare’s plays from isolation. This week, they revisited Love’s Labour’s Lost, the first production they were ever in together, and on our very own Globe stage. Prompted by questions from our audience, Michelle and Paul discussed why it’s Michelle’s favourite play, how Shakespeare once again marries joy and melancholy and why it’s such an anarchic play. 

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 discuss As You Like It. With questions sent in by our audience, Michelle and Paul consider why Rosalind and Celia’s relationship is so central to the play, why audiences seem to love Rosalind so much and why this bonkers play is one of their most beloved! 

This week on the podcast, the Shakespeare diaries returns. Our very own actor artistic director Michelle Terry and actor Paul Ready discuss Shakespeare’s plays from isolation. This week, just in time for the summer solstice, they turn to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. With questions sent in by our audience, Michelle and Paul consider the epic scope of this play, from climate change and chaos in the cosmos, to the relationship between jealousy and power, and the pervasive idea of capture that spans the play. 

This week on the podcast, we take a moment of reflection. As the future of theatre is in question, we take inspiration from the Globe’s past. What does this rich history of reinvention, of imagination and an enduring determination to tell stories mean to us today? And how do we move into the future when theatre may never be the same again? We asked members of the Globe family far and wide to reflect with us, building an audio time capsule of the Globe and what it means to them. This episode celebrates memory: of people, places and things and how in the act of remembrance, we begin to slowly stitch ourselves back together and look to the future with all the promise and hope of rebirth and renewal.   

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.

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.

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 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 (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 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

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 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.

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 ideas about our collective past. We’ll be asking: what is this sceptr’ed isle now? Why is it important to interrogate and keep interrogating our own history, as well as Shakespeare’s version of it? How can the plays act as a kaleidoscope through which to view, to understand and to question our own society?

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 in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, brought up to date for 2019. We went behind the scenes with the company – director Blanche McIntyre and actors Zach Wyatt, Josh Lacey and Richard Katz – to find out more about Bartholomew Fair and Londoner’s past and present, and to ask how much has really changed since Jonson’s Londoners partied in the streets of Smithfield?

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 as 21st century theatre-goers, what do we make of the misogyny in Shakespeare?    

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’ means in his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and as a political act at this moment in our culture and society.  

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 particular fascination with Shakespeare in Poland, and how has it become so politicised? How does Shakespeare cross international borders and how does this change the way we read, understand, perform and see Shakespeare? And what do we mean when we talk about the ‘universality’ of Shakespeare? We chat to translators Tony Howard and Barbara Bogoczek about the life and work of Stanisław Wyspiański; director Nastazja Somers and actress Edyta Budnik delve into The Death of Ophelia, a chance to hear from one of Shakespeare’s best-known but least heard characters; and Dr Will Tosh explores how Shakespeare’s work has spread across the world and what that means for Shakespeare today. Please note: today’s episode includes references to suicide and mental health issues.

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 migration, how can we tell these complex and layered stories and what role can Shakespeare’s work play in that dialogue?

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 what might the relationship between women and power look like in future?    We hear from Sarah Amankwah, who is playing King Henry V in the Globe’s history plays about what it means to take on the role as a woman and a woman of colour. We chat to classicist Donna Zuckerberg, whose book Not All Dead White Men, delves into the murky, misogynistic online world of the alt-right. And we sit down with Claire Van Kampen to talk about the progress she’s seen when it comes to the relationship between women and power in her lengthy career across the arts. And as we move forwards, we look to the women who came before us, with an extract imagining the life of Shakespeare’s sister from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. 

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.

November 11 2018 marks the centenary of Armistice Day, one hundred years since the end of the First World War. Ahead of Shakespeare and Remembrance here at the Globe, we ask: what can the real experience of war teach us about performing Shakespeare and what can performing Shakespeare teach us about war and its effects? We chat to Neil Davies, Shaun Johnson and Max Hamilton McKenzie, ex-military personnel who will be performing in Shakespeare and Remembrance, about their journeys since leaving the Forces and what art and performance has offered them as therapy and rehabilitation. Shakespeare and Remembrance will include extracts from Shakespeare’s plays alongside original pieces written by those in the show about their own experiences of conflict. This episode does contains explicit language, and references to suicide.