A Teenager's Take on Shakespeare

Welcome, listeners, to the final episode of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare — consider this a little early Christmas present for you all!  This episode's guest was a huge inspiration to me when I first delved deep into Shakespeare and is now, I am very fortunate to say, one of my professors at the University of Oxford. Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College Oxford....

Welcome to another special episode of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare!  In this episode, I, host Annabelle Higgins, discuss several well-known Shakespearean classics such as Verily, A New Hope, Much Ado About Mean Girls, The Taming of the Clueless, and — hang on, are those Shakespeare? Nope, they’re the work of today’s amazing guest, Ian Doescher. Ian Doescher lives in Portland, Oregon, and is th...

Hello listeners, and welcome back to A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! In this episode, I open up my discussion of Shakespeare in Oxford with Dr Peter Sutton, covering Jesus College’s impressive Shakespeare Project, and learn a thing or two about directing student productions! Dr Peter Sutton is Alumni Engagement Manager of Jesus College, Oxford and Artistic Director of the Jesus College Shakespea...

Hello, listeners, and welcome to Season 5, Episode 3 of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! In this episode, I talk with Dr Darren Freebury-Jones about his monograph ’Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers’, spanning Thomas Kyd, John Lyly, John Fletcher, and, of course, the great Bard himself. Dr Darren Freebury-Jones is author of the monographs: Reading Robert Greene: Recovering Shakespeare’s Rival (Routl...

Welcome, listeners, to episode 2 of Season 5 of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! In this episode, I talk with Valerie Clayman Pye about her amazing books, audience engagement and subjectivity, embodied performance, and much, much more.  Valerie Clayman Pye is an actor, director, author, and academic who specializes in making Shakespeare accessible and training other artists to do the same. She is...

Welcome, listeners, to the first episode of Season 5, in which we’ll be taking a deep dive into Shakespeare’s texts with various scintillating minds! In this episode, I talk with David Sterling Brown about his book, Shakespeare’s White Others; we explore who the white other is, crossing the intraracial colour line, the decomposition of white masculinity, and much, much more. Dr. David Sterling Bro...

Welcome to A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare’s fourth Monologue Roundup, wrapping up the Teen Take Shax Miscellany. This has been such a fun season to record and share with you all — with no one set theme uniting the episodes, we’ve covered a lot of different ground with these plays, from the spooky to the festive and everything in between. Here David Johnson and Melissa Barrett, Ellicia Elliott, D...

Welcome, everyone, to Season 4, Episode 6 of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! In this episode, I chat with Olga Blagodatskih about her work in the Moscow Shake-scene, the way she approaches Shakespeare’s texts and how small roles can have a big impact. Olga Blagodatskikh is a bilingual actor, voice-over artist, and educator. Passion for classical English theatre brought her to London to study Sha...

Welcome back, listeners, to A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! It’s been a while, but we’re back in business with lots of exciting plans for 2024. In this episode, I (host Annabelle Higgins) chat with Blioux Kirkby and Nat Kennedy about their company, The Sirrah Sisters, from their beginnings and philosophies to their shows and rehearsal practice. The Sirrah Sisters started in 2018, after a casting...

Welcome to the Christmas Special of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! In this episode, two burning passions of mine converge as Stephanie Crugnola and I discuss which Shakespeare plays would be the best on ice, giving three podium places as well as some honourable mentions. From the heart-rendingly tragic to the light-heartedly comic, helplessly romantic and thoroughly dramatic, we cover staging p...

Welcome to the November episode of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! In this episode, I, host Annabelle Higgins, discuss social media and early modern literature, revitalising Shakespeare for today’s audiences and Yassifying the Bard’s work with Danielle Rosvally and Trevor Boffone. Trevor Boffone went viral in 2019 and hasn't looked back. His work using TikTok and Instagram with his students has...

Welcome to the October Episode of the Teen Take Shax Miscellany! Halloween is coming up and A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare is getting into the spooky spirit with Ellicia Elliot in this bewitching conversation. In this episode, we discuss ghosts, spirits, witches, and all the unholy terrors Shakespeare crammed his theatre with across his impressive career (well, as many as we could, at least). El...

Welcome, listeners, to Season 4 of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare, the Teen Take Shax Miscellany! Thank you for your patience as I’ve been busy dealing with the academic side of life. It’s good to be back! Now, without further ado, today's guests are David Johnson and Melissa Barrett, artistic directors and actor managers of Sun and Moon Theatre. In this episode, we discuss Midsummer, Much Ado,...

Welcome, one and all, to A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare’s third Monologue Roundup — the culmination of The Genre-l Idea! This has been a season of insights and exploration, and this showcase of some of Shakespeare’s best comic and tragic stuff plus all things in between encapsulates the spirit of our discussions. Here Victoria Rae Sook, Marshall Garrett, Elyse Sharp, Sally McLean, Carla Della Ga...

Welcome, one and all, to the final interview episode of The Genre-l Idea! After tackling the First Folio categorisations and later Victorian sub-genres of Shakespeare’s plays, we’re going to have a look at Shakespeare’s poetry. With me is a friend of the podcast back again for another episode, Fenna Capelle. In this episode, we discuss love vs desire, poetry vs performance and the relationship bet...

Welcome to Episode 5 of The Genre-l Idea on A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! This week we’re talking about Shakespeare’s romance plays, and my brilliant guest is Mandy Hughes. In this episode, we discuss the overlap between problem plays and romances, familial reunion and the relationships between fathers and daughters (plus the roles of daughters in general, because let’s face it, they’re INCRED...

Welcome, listeners, to the fourth episode of season 3, The Genre-l Idea! Today I, host Annabelle Higgins, will be chatting problem plays with Dr Carla Della Gatta. In this episode, we discuss Frederick Boas’ initial definition, social critique onstage and what kind of problems make a problem play. Carla Della Gatta is a theatre historian and performance theorist whose research focuses on ethnicity...

Welcome to episode 3 of The Genre-l Idea on A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! Today I have the fantastic Sally McLean on with me to talk about Shakespeare’s history plays. In this episode, we discuss how the Tudor setting of Shakespeare’s day influenced Shakespeare’s work, the relationship between dramatic and contemporary history and the Bard’s calculated balance of the political with the familia...

Welcome, listeners, to episode 2 of The Genre-l Idea! Today we’ll be covering Shakespearean tragedies in all their gob-smacking, grief-stricken, gory glory with Elyse Sharp. In this episode, we talk about just what tragedy means in relation to comedy, what’s truly tragic about all the blood and death and how we define tragedy in modern terms. Elyse Sharp (she/her) is an actor, director, producer,...

Welcome, listeners, to Season 3 of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare, The Genre-l Idea. This season, host Annabelle Higgins will be talking with guests about 'tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited', in Polonius’ words. Today there’s not one but two incredible guests,...

Welcome to Season 2’s Monologue Roundup of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! In this episode, guests Stephanie Crugnola, Emily Carding, Alice Bloomer, Dominic Brewer, Danielle Farrow and Rob Myles perform monologues from one of their character choices, reciting the very words that show us why they love them. This episode features friends, Romans, kings, queens and princes of all kinds, a true cele...

Welcome to the final episode of Season 2, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, of A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! Today’s phenomenal guest is Robert Myles; I, host Annabelle Higgins, chatted with him about the noblest and most Stoic Roman of them all, the amateur dramatist who sees a dream about a donkey’s head as perfect for a theatrical production and a jealous king entangled in his own devastat...

Hello listeners, and welcome to A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! Today I, host Annabelle Higgins, will be chatting with the lovely Danielle Farrow. In this episode, Danielle and I discuss a fierce French princess turned English queen, the beloved and mentally confused Danish prince and a Scottish thane of Glamis, Cawdor and eventual king. Danielle is an actor and occasional Shakespeare coach - ge...

Hello everyone, and welcome back to A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! Today’s amazing guest is Dominic Brewer. In this episode, we discuss the Danish prince we all know and love, a weak king whose reflections on solitude are still resonant today (one might call him the Hamlet of the histories) and a cunning, stunningly charming actor-playwright, as many call him, determined to orchestrate the prot...

Welcome to episode 3 of Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays on A Teenager’s Take on Shakespeare! Today, Alice Bloomer chats with host Annabelle Higgins about princesses/fools who support and lament the choices of an elderly father/king, mischievous sprites who are simply in it for the fun of it and a driven Scottish queen who will stop at nothing to achieve the crown her husband has been prophesied....