“Just in time for the holidays comes this weird new classic. From Twisted Christmas Live in Santa Rosa, California, Reed Martin reads David Templeton’s dark holiday tale The Most Dangerous Christmas. Featuring an excerpt from The Reduced Shakespeare Company Christmas and rain on the rooftop! (MP3. Length 18:58)
Podcast: Download (Duration: 18:58 — 17.4MB)
Actor/comedian Mike McShane (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?) is playing Ebenezer Scrooge in A Red Carol, a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol for the legendary San Francisco Mime Troupe. Mike discusses how this "activist adaptation" differs from other takes on the Dickens classic; how he’s able to combine serious dramatic acting with, in his words, "as cheap comedy as you can get this year” and how a clown can play Hamlet easier than a proper actor can play a clown; the disconnect between Christmas Carol audiences in the theater and the same people passing unhoused people on the street; how two veterans of West End Shakespeare are both playing Scrooge for American theater institutions in San Francisco and Chicago; how Alan Rickman came up with his great lines in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; and the glory of creating politically activist theater that’s also ridiculously funny and entertaining. (Length 21:21)
Humorist and novelist James Finn Garner returns to discuss his New York Times bestselling collection Politically Correct Holiday Stories and how the holidays represent a deeply personal literary tradition. Jim shares how challenging it was to walk that satirical line between poking fun at holiday cant while still embracing genuine sentiment; how a holiday story was his first published work; how bedtime stories were easier to satirize because everything’s so black and white; how play can be the best form of celebration; how he wants to shift holiday paradigms and sit down to a feast of mutual delusions; and the thing that made a hard-boiled humorist go all soft and squishy inside. (Length 19:22)
Darren Freebury-Jones's fascinating new book, Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers: How early modern playwrights shaped the world’s greatest writer, contextualizes Shakespeare’s writing and examines how it expands upon and diverges from the other plays being written at the time. In this fun conversation, Darren, a lecturer in Shakespeare Studies in Stratford-upon-Avon, considers alternate ways of identifying Shakespeare’s artistry; dispels the myth of Shakespeare as a solitary genius; likens this kind of early modern study to examining the output of a single band’s music without reference to other bands making music at the same time; and reveals how Shakespeare, as part of a thriving theatrical community, was less an upstart crow than a brilliant magpie. CONTENT WARNING: There will be math(s). (Length 24:28)
4 Comments
Hailey B. · December 25, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Can’t wait for next year’s twisted christmas story!!!!!
austin · December 22, 2010 at 5:25 pm
(PS – Here’s what she said before her spoilers: “I had a fit of giggles while listening to this podcast!”)
austin · December 22, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Emily, I’m not going to Approve your (highly complimentary) comment, but only because you give away two major plot points! Glad you liked it, though.
Emily · December 22, 2010 at 4:31 pm
I had a fit of giggles while listening to this podcast!
“Everyone understands the rules? After the creature has been allowed a three minute head start…there are NO MORE RULES.”
“Santa Claus, gazing directly into the crosshairs of the Baron’s rifle sight, calmly removed his large red hat, smiled knowingly, and pointed a finger…at the Sasquatch.”