Episode 614. Taming Shakespeare’s “Shrew”

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Shana Cooper directed Taming of the Shrew at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival this summer, a production that received rave reviews from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Shana, an assistant professor at Northwestern University, discusses how she made this troublesome play work in our slightly more enlightened (hopefully) and evolving era. Featuring key commedia influences, a classic battle of the sexes play that’s also a satire of same, being sold on the love story, the importance of clowns, the danger and absurdity of the patriarchy, one virtue of the Christopher Sly scenes, forging unknown and thorny paths, the importance of non-verbal text, radical and revolutionary individuals, and most importantly, finding alternatives to broken systems and masculine ideas of power. (Length 28:56) (Pictured: Liz Wisan and Biko Eisen-Martin as Kate and Petruchio in the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of Taming of the Shrew. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.)

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