A Bonus episode! For all who celebrate – the only thing you’ll ever have to say. From The Ultimate Christmas Show (abridged).
Podcast: Download (Duration: 0:57 — 1.1MB)
409 years ago today, on April 22, 1616, William Shakespeare himself spoke to Tony Dean, the creator and host of the Calling History Podcast, which features conversations with history's most influential and interesting people. Tony explains how the podcast got started, how he finds his guests (including Austin Tichenor as Shakespeare), how Ralph Waldo Emerson remains the podcast's great white whale, and how the Calling History Podcast is filled with unbelievable but absolutely true stories. HEAR HERE! (You can listen to part one of Tony's conversation with Shakespeare here and part two here.) Length 19:50.
Do you not "get" Shakespeare? Well, you're not alone! Improviser and "ensemble whisperer" Liz Allen returns to the podcast to explore the reasons she's never really connected with Shakespeare's plays. Allen famously coached the fictional improv team in Mike Birbiglia's film Don't Think Twice but fears missing out on both cultural and satirical opportunities, and discusses with host Austin Tichenor the ways in which she (and many others) have missed the Shakespeare boat; how to describe the appeal of Shakespeare in five words; the value of “Tools, Not Rules;” drawing inspiration from Darren Freebury-Jones’s Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers; how being haughty at dinner parties is the real goal; and the very real relationship between Shakespeare and improvisation. (Length 31:14)
Julie Hammonds's debut novel Blue Mountain Rose is a love letter to theatre and a valentine to the perfect summer Shakespeare festival we all wish we lived next to or worked at year-round. On this week's episode, Julie discusses how you create in fiction the things you can't in real life; the relief of dramatizing professionalism rather than soap-opera histrionics; investigating the perils of celebrity and the timelessness of Shakespeare; and how reading Blue Mountain Rose might just have you booking a flight to Flagstaff, Arizona. (Length 19:50)