Reduced Shakespeare Company Podcast

Mary Hartman, the director of education at Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vancouver, BC, Canada, shares her philosophy for Shakespeare education and its emphasis on play. Mary reveals why threads is a better term than themes; how Shakespeare’s plays should not be poetry readings; how she's developed the Discovery Zone, an extensive free resource for both students and educators; and how...

Cathy Sandrich is the Emmy-winning casting director of The Pitt, HBO's Emmy-winning outstanding drama beginning its second season this week. A veteran of various "big boy movies," Cathy reveals how she sees thousands of actors for hundreds of roles; the supreme importance of lists; how one starts over with every project; the importance of strong and truthful choices; how casting directors have to...

On its 30th anniversary, we present the complete audio of The Reduced Shakespeare Company Christmas, which walked so The Ultimate Christmas Show (abridged) could run, and was first recorded and broadcast on Public Radio International in 1995. Featuring conversations with both the crew of Yule-Sat and Charles Dickens; festive (and occasionally dated) partying at the RSC HQ in Northern California; t...

Jon Hudson Odom and Helen Joo Lee (above) reveal how they bring surprising joy to their portrayals of the iconic Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit in this year's Goodman Theatre production of A Christmas Carol. Jon and Helen share the various productions that have inspired them; how they keep the performances fresh; how their own families shape their instincts; how the Cratchits code-switch; the moving and ve...

Gregory Hirte (above) reflects on the twenty-five years (!) he's been in the Goodman Theatre's annual production of A Christmas Carol, and how both he and the show have changed in that time. Hirte reveals the benefits of being both an actor and a musician; the challenge of going where the work is; how he got started with Chicago's famed Piven Theatre Workshop; tales of onstage mishaps; his vote fo...

Matt Croke, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor remember the creation of the RSC's second radio show The Reduced Shakespeare Company Christmas in 1995, and how it paved the way for the RSC's eighth stage show The Ultimate Christmas Show (abridged). Matt, Reed, and Austin reveal their audio inspirations (like Firesign Theatre and 'Weird Al' Yankovic); how the new golden age of radio is called podcasts...

Friend of the pod Katherine Scheil is the author of Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife: The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway and the co-editor of the upcoming Palgrave Handbook of Shakespearean Biofiction, is the perfect person to talk about Chloé Zhao's film version of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel. Scheil highlights some of the differences between the novel and the film; some head-scratching marketi...

Folger Shakespeare Library director Farah Karim-Cooper's new book All the World's Your Stage explores for readers of all ages the life and times of William Shakespeare through eight of his most popular plays. Dr. Karim-Cooper discusses how this was one of her hardest books to write and reveals the surprising title of her favorite Shakespeare play; the relationship between profanity and a love of l...

Malkia Stampley (above) is directing the Goodman Theatre's 48th annual production of A Christmas Carol (in previews now, opening Sunday, and running through New Year's Eve), and reflects how her experience in other productions, as well as her background as both a performer and a person, informs her approach to Dickens's classic tale. Malkia reveals how she's amplifying the diversity the production...

To celebrate the start of the podcast's 20th Season, playwright and author Andrew Moorhead returns to talk about his play This Purple F***ing Pot, a new office comedy now getting a limited site-specific run off-Broadway. Andrew reveals the ah-ha moment when the play's title first came to him; how he loves the sound of characters speaking; the various inspirations that helped inform his voice (incl...

Chicago's Improvised Shakespeare Company celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2025, and founder/director Blaine Swendiscusses the company's humble origins and how it now performs regularly in Chicago and Los Angeles and tours all across America. Blaine shares performing secrets; the nature of the high-wire act of improvising in iambic pentameter; how this stuff can be learned; how several of every p...

The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged), an irreverent celebration of “the greatest story ever accepted as fact” that was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and Matthew Croke, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor reminisce about its creation and how much the world has changed since it premiered at the Kennedy Center in 1995. The origi...

Stage actor Shannon Cochran (August: Osage County) brings her horror movie bona fides (The Ring; The Hand That Rocks The Cradle) to the phenomenal new stage play Paranormal Activity, an original new story based on the successful film franchise now running at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (followed by the Ahmanson Theatre in LA, American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and the Shakespeare Thea...

A hundred years on from the Harlem Renaissance, Gerrad Alex Taylor has adapted Langston Hughes’s Shakespeare in Harlem, which is having its world premiere this month at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, running from October 30 to November 9, 2025. Taylor shares how he's collaborating with both Hughes and Shakespeare to canonize the Black experience; how we call upon our ancestors, both...

The Q Brothers Collective (Othello: The Remix; Funk It Up About Nothing) have created Rome Sweet Rome, a wild and satirical new “add-rap-tation” of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar now running at Chicago Shakespeare Theater through October 19, 2025. Bri Sudia and Danielle Davis are stand-out members of a glorious ensemble, and they discuss how they've gotten comfortable with rapping and the “Q Vibe”; h...

RSC artistic directors Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor are directing college productions of their comedies William Shakespeare's Long Lost First Play (abridged) and The Comedy of Hamlet! (a prequel), and they discuss the differences they discover in their scripts when other actors are performing them. Reed and Austin share how different actors bring different energies; the difference between a vau...

RSC artistic directors and co-authors Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor discuss how they've updated All the Great Books (abridged), which embarks on a US tour this fall. Reed and Austin share what changes they've made to this script (and all the RSC scripts) and how our scripts, like all plays, develop new meanings depending on the personnel performing them and the times in which they’re being perfo...

Our conversation with Nina Ruscio, the production designer of The Pitt, continues this week with further details of how unprecedented her design for HBO's Emmy-winning Best Drama really is. Nina compares her work on this show with other large projects she's designed; reveals the incredible amount of interior and exterior detail she puts into her designs, and how shooting The Pitt is very much like...

Nina Ruscio, the Emmy-nominated (for The Flight Attendant) production designer of The Pitt on HBO, discusses how her design helped create this enormous – and enormously popular – show. Nina reveals how producer John Wells (The West Wing; E.R.) tasked her with creating a ground plan before the writers even started writing episodes; the joy of living a freelance, project-based lifestyle; how her bac...

Playwright James Sherman (Chagall in School) returns to discuss his new play The First Lady of Television, now having its world premiere at Chicago's Northlight Theatre. Jim shares his inspiration for the play; how his subject Gertrude Berg, creator of The Goldbergs (1949-1957) on both radio and television, was the second most famous woman in America (after Eleanor Roosevelt); his gratitude for hi...

Actors and now playwrights Michael Doherty and Will Mobley have written the wonderful new comedy Dogberry and Verges Are Scared, which is having its world premiere at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival from September 5-14, 2025. Mike and Will took time out from rehearsal to discuss the play's inspirations and origins; how clowns do table work in rehearsal; how they pitched each other ideas and reali...

Joe Liss (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Strangers With Candy; Home Alone 2) and Dee Ryan (The Office, 10 Items Or Less, United States of Tara) are bringing their improvised horror parody Misery Loves Company to the Rochester Fringe Festival this September 12 & 14, and they discuss the wine-soaked origins of this "cockadoodie" good time. These two improv gurus share why this is the first time they've worke...

James Shapiro wears many hats – author, scholar, cultural historian, consultant to New York's Public Theatre – discusses his work with actors and students, as well as his invaluable books A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, and Shakespeare in a Divided America. Shapiro also shares experiences of working on this summer's Twelfth Night in New York'...

Tiffany Keane Schaefer is the writer and director of Twihard! A Twilight Musical Parody, now running at Chicago’s Apollo Theatre for a limited time. Tiffany discusses the origins of her musical at the Otherworld Theatre Company, which is dedicated exclusively to science-fiction and fantasy programming (and which she runs with her husband – and friend of the pod – Dylan Schaefer); how Twilight repr...

Playwright Lauren Gunderson returns to discuss her new play Billie Jean, about tennis and civil rights legend Billie Jean King, now having its world premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. Gunderson reflects on the similarities between sports and theatre and how they inform this spectacular new work; its surprisingly fast and enviable development process; the parallels to her earlier plays; the e...