A belated shout-out for a series I completed last month, commissioned by the Guardian: a play-by-play journey through the canon in the company of actors, directors, designers, dancers, musicians and one prop expert (on, naturally, how she sourced enough blood for Titus Andronicus). The aim was to ask them about an individual play, and talk about a production they’d been involved in. It began in January, and just wrapped up.
There were some fascinating interviews: Patrick Stewart on playing Shylock multiple times (“I should have been arrested for overacting”), Willard White on Othello (“I broke down”), Harriet Walter on Antony and Cleopatra, Ivo van Hove on Coriolanus, Cush Jumbo on Julius Caesar, Jonathan Pryce on Hamlet … Some real goodies, in other words.
I conducted most of the interviews, alongside my brilliant colleagues Lyndsey Winship, David Jays and editor Chris Wiegand, whose idea it all was. Enjoy.
• Guardian series: How we staged Shakespeare
Image: Cush Jumbo in rehearsals for Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Julius Caesar in 2012 (Graham Turner for the Guardian)
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Pleasing to have one’s name up in pixels alongside 