Reduced Shakespeare Company Podcast

Michigan Shakespeare Festival artistic director Janice L. Blixt returns to discuss MSF’s new season, their first in several years, and their new home at Wayne State University in Detroit. Blixt reveals how MSF, like so many arts organizations, not only endured but survived “death by a thousand cuts;” the importance of having a supportive board of directors; putting their best foot forward in a new...

Reduced Shakespeare Company founder Daniel Rover Singer returns to talk about his new play Louisa At Fruitlands, about the intersection of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, when she was a little ten-year-old herself, and the Fruitlands transcendentalist community. Daniel talks about the origins of the RSC and how the landmark work The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) b...

Jason King Jones, artistic director of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, shares details about PSF's current season, their plans to host the 2027 Shakespeare Theatre Association conference, and how he's retained his ability to laugh and his capacity for joy. Jason shares how he threads the needle of programming work that reaches his diverse audience; how the entire western canon of theatrical...

Carey Perloff (Pinter and Stoppard: A Director's View) discusses how she worked with Tom Stoppard to bring his last and most personal play Leopoldstadt to Chicago's Writers Theatre and shape it into a form American theaters will be able to produce more easily. Perloff, the former artistic director of San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatrewhere she directed the U.S. premieres of several of S...

Caroline Bicks, the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair of Literature at the University of Maine, returns to continue our conversation about her new book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King. Caroline reveals her own terrifying fears and shares the kind of book she did not want to write; how she dared to infuse her academic writing with (gasp!) personality; her desire to become...

In the glorious American Blues Theater production of Always...Patsy Cline, Molly Hernández discusses how her character of Louise brings a lively theatricality to what could be "just" a well-produced jukebox musical. Molly shares how she was encouraged to bring her authentic "chaos gremlin" self to the role; how this show differs from other shows she's done in Chicago (including Lookingglass Theate...

In his own personal Year of Lear, Daniel Mothershed (above) is playing both King Lear and the Fool in the Bowls With The Bard production of King Lear, immediately after directing the second production of Austin Tichenor's adaptation of Christopher Moore's novel Fool. Daniel discusses this experiment with theatrical duality; how the RSC Podcast interview with famous Fool Adrian Scarborough unlocked...

Chicago's City Lit Theater presents the world premiere of Kingsley Day's and James Grossman's Scaramouche: The Swashbuckling Musical! and City Lit's executive artistic director Brian Pastor and the show's director Beth Wolf discuss how this ambitious musical came to be. Brian and Beth reveal the secrets to being a good producer (spoiler: it’s creative problem solving) and directing new works; lean...

Improv: The Play at Chicago’s IO Theatre pairs an actor and an improviser performing a two-person scripted scene where only the actor knows their lines, followed by a team of improvisers who perform an extended improvisational scene inspired by the scripted scene they all just watched. Producer and cast member Cory Hardin reveals the show's inspiration from friend of the pod Matt Walsh (Veep); how...

Helen Joo Lee and Lucky Stiff are two of the nine solo performers guiding audiences through the Goodman Theatre production of David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar's Theatre of the Mind, a uniquely interactive and immersive theatrical experience now running in Chicago through July 12, 2026. Helen and Lucky share stories about the audition process and reveal the new skills they get to call upon; how so many...

At Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, Pericles boldly goes where no Pericles has gone before. Artistic Director Brian Isaac Phillips discusses how his space-age setting for Shakespeare's underrated Romance is weirdly more relatable than the maritime travel in the original; how they've changed very little language (apart from some references of ‘sea’ to ‘sky’); how there's nothing new under the sun (f...

Professor Caroline Bicks holds the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair of Literature at the University of Maine, and is the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives. That research has led to Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King, her new book that digs deep into King's original manuscripts and discovers connections to William Shakespeare along t...

Playwright Jacques Lamarre returns to discuss his epic new work, Circus Fire, which commemorates one of the worst fire disasters in U.S. history, and which Hartford's Theaterworks is producing as part of its 40th anniversary season. Jacques reveals the origins of his own fascination with the topic; how this is the largest production Theaterworks has ever mounted; how it's already been extended twi...

Actor, author, director, and educator Ben Crystal returns to discuss his book Shakespeare on Toast, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary and is now available in short entertaining clips on Instagram. Ben shares how the book came to be and the origins of its terrific title; how he and his father wrote the definitive work for the 21st century Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Compan...

Matthew Croke, former clown, RSC actor, and current podcast consigliere, returns to discuss where the RSC Podcast should go in its next 1000 episodes. Matt and Austin discuss the huge recent bump in German listeners; share tips and cautionary tales for our fellow content creators; compare podcast editing platforms Descript and Riverside; tease a possible new recurring segment; reveal the importanc...

After shocking upsets in last week's Rounds of 64 and 32, our Ides of March Madness tournament continues with a Sweet 16 consisting of Nick Bottom vs. Richard III, Beatrice vs. Sir John Falstaff, Juliet vs. Cassius, Marc Antony vs. Margaret, Aaron vs. Hamlet, Emilia vs. Prince Hal/Henry V, Lady Macbeth vs. Caliban, and Paulina vs. Viola. Judges DeeDee Batteast, Nate Cohen, Elizabeth Dennehy, Grego...

It. Has. Come. Down. To. This. RSC co-artistic director Austin Tichenor is joined by actors, directors, coaches, and Shakespeareans DeeDee Batteast, Elizabeth Dennehy, Gregory Linington, and director/mathemagician Nate Cohen to decide Shakespeare's Best Character in our (mostly) annual Ides of March Madness tournament. The distinguished panel reveals unexpected seeding for some characters fans won...

William Sutton has memorized all of Shakespeare’s sonnets so you don’t have to, and created ILoveShakespeare.com (above), an online collection and examination of all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets organized by themes of Love, Death, Nature, Pain, and Time. Will is an actor, educator, and alumnus of The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, and reveals the possibly real reason Shakespeare wro...

The Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation, one of the UK’s oldest cultural education charities, hosts the annual Shakespeare Schools Festival, which gives young people the confidence and skills to succeed in life by using the unique power of Shakespeare to transform lives. Mike Tucker, the head of the Foundation, discusses how they demystify Shakespeare (for teachers and students alike) by removing...

Professor Ronan Hatfull literally wrote the book on the Reduced Shakespeare Company. His new book from Bloomsbury/Arden – Shakespeare in the Theatre: Reduced Shakespeare Company – is the very first full-length study to be published about the RSC. Focusing specifically on our Shakespearean reduction and adaptation, Ronan's book examines the origins and evolution of the company through the creation...

Say hello to the newest UK incarnation of the Reduced Shakespeare Company! Efé Agwele, Woogie Jung, Kiran Raywilliams, and Tom Pavey join director and RSC founder Adam Long to discuss our brand-new tour of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) that's hitting at least 29 cities across the UK in this first half of 2026. The gang talks about how they were cast; their origins both humbl...

Our live celebration of 1000 weeks of podcasting onstage at Chicago's Annoyance Theater continues this week as Annoyance founder and directors Mick Napier and Jennifer Estlin discuss the evolution of their mentalism and closeup magic double-act. Mick and Jen share their early inspiration; a special appearance from telephone psychic Vanessa Sawyer from the Kenny Kingston Psychic Hotline; shout-out...

It's our 1000th episode! And we celebrated in high-style with a live recording onstage at Chicago's Annoyance Theatrewith Annoyance's founder and artistic director Mick Napier (Paradigm Lost, Exit 57) and its executive director Jennifer Estlin. Mick and Jen discuss the theatre's origins; how Mick wanted to set the Annoyance apart from what Second Citywas doing (but ended up returning to the mother...

Author James Finn Garner (Politically Correct Bedtime Stories) returns to discuss his latest satire, Politically Correct Peter Pan, and the difficulties of staying ahead of contemporary sensibilities. Garner reveals how his background as an actor informs his writing; how he gets to do what he loves; how he prefers editing what he's written to actually writing; the fun of playing in sandboxes other...

What happens when you’re a five-person theatre company whose stage manager is too sick to fly and the shipping company won’t deliver your props and costumes? Reed Martin explains what happened last month when those hiccups affected our performances of The Ultimate Christmas Show (abridged) in Oregon and Washington. It’s a tale of improvisation; scrambling and calling on reserves; promoting from wi...