Backstage

Filming ‘Complete Works’

Adam Long, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor – the cast of the film version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) – reminisce about the 2000 filming of the RSC’s signature work, and discuss the extraordinary lengths the production went to ensure they were jet-lagged for the entire process. Revelations include the secret cameo from co-author and RSC founding member Daniel Singer; how different actors must play jokes differently; the Spinal Tap observation that relative size is the difference between funny and scary; how to make friends in British and Irish pubs; and how the RSC vibe might best be described as squabbling siblings bound together in a brotherhood of Shakespeare. (Length 21:33) (PICTURED: Reed Martin, Adam Long, and Austin Tichenor enjoying post-show beverages in Shuttleworth’s Pub, Charing Cross Road, 1992. Photo by Kent Tichenor.)

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Funny To Us

Playwrights and RSC artistic directors Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor discuss the updates they’ve been making to all their scripts (including All the Great Books (abridged), featuring Doug Harvey, Tré Zijuan Tyler, and Michael Faulkner, below) and how their writing process begins with coming up with material that’s personal resonant. Martin and Tichenor reveal the despair of artists listening to the mortgage when evaluating their work; how not all laughs are created equal; how the great job of making people laugh now feels like an supremely important job; and how hearing the audience gasp at the turns in the narrative is even more satisfying to us. (Length 24:21)

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Blue Mountain Rose

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)

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Returning To MRT!

RSC artistic directors Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor discuss their return to Merrimack Repertory Theatre with the company’s 11th show, The Comedy of Hamlet! (a prequel) as MRT’s 300th production. Reed and Austin reveal the RSC’s deep connections to New England; how this will be the RSC’s third show to premiere at MRT (after The Complete World of Sports (abridged) and The Ultimate Christmas Show (abridged) and seventh visit overall; and share insights into the creation of the show and why they changed the title; how the show’s roll-out and script development got interrupted by the pandemic; what milestone anniversary will be celebrated by our first MRT performance; and how creating a prequel to Shakespeare’s greatest play brought unexpected emotional connections to the characters. (LENGTH 18:24)

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Key West ‘Angel’s

Successful playwrights and television writers (and married couple) Barbara Wallace and Tom Wolfe are playing successful playwrights (and married couple) Charlotte and Arthur Sanders in the Waterfront Playhouse production of Paul Slade Smith’s The Angel Next Door through February 8, 2025. Friends of the pod Barb and Tom make their first joint appearance to talk about their return to the stage as “eccentric artists” playing eccentric artists; being directed by Waterfront Playhouse artistic director Patrick New; help from Chicago actor (and friend of the pod) Laura T. Fisher and the LineLearner app; the importance of reading a script’s “funny type;” a possible new play called Terror at Four Feet; finding out one’s musical chops are out of tune; and how much acting is actually involved for two successful writers playing two successful writers. (Length 21:06)

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Threading The Needle

For this first episode of 2025, RSC co-artistic directors Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor discuss how Austin plays the “Alternate Scrooge” in the Goodman Theatre production of A Christmas Carol for the third year in a row. Austin reveals how he threads the needle of honoring the Scrooges he alternates with (Larry Yando and Christopher Donahue) while still making the character his own; the difference between being an alternate and an understudy; how he inherited the role from previous alternate and now current Scrooge Allen Gilmore; the secrets to flying, including massive shout-outs to ZFX Flying, who makes the magic happen (not “VFX,” as misidentified by Austin); what it’s like to work with young performers; the danger of running out of mental bandwidth during the holidays; and the privilege of jumping from reduced productions to the Goodman’s massive annual extravaganza. (Length 38:46)

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Chekhov To Dickens

Chicago actor Christopher Donahue (currently playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the Goodman Theatre’s production of A Christmas Carol), discusses playing the role of Gayev in the Goodman’s 2023 production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, directed by Robert Falls. Donahue reveals the challenges and rewards of discovering a character in rehearsal; how he finds humor alongside absurdity; how he takes inspiration from the original Dickens novel of A Christmas Carol; how people can be capable of change; his relationship with Tony-winning director (and friend of the pod) Mary Zimmerman; and finally, how the audience teaches you how to perform the play because the audience is the reason we do this. (Length 20:51)

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Mike McShane’s Scrooge

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)

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Ring Reduced Remembered

It’s the Podcast’s 18th birthday! Austin Tichenor, Reed Martin, and Adam Long celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Ring Reduced, the RSC’s 1994 film for Britain’s Channel 4 which compressed Wagner’s epic opera Der Ring des Nibelungen into a brief and palatable 24 minutes. Adam, Austin, and Reed share their favorite fun facts about Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung; reveal their inspiration from Anna Russell; speculate on comic directions not taken; confirm that the Reduced Shakespeare Company is completely and utterly responsible for the success of Ted Lasso; disclose how they created the most expensive and complicated gag of the entire shoot; and marvel how for one brief shining moment, they were the Rhinemaidens of all media. (Length 29:09)

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Ruining Father’s Day

Mark Nutter and Tom Wolfe bring their special blend of comedy and music to an evening entitled “Another Father’s Day Ruined,” part of the Solo Sunday series held at Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro. Mark and Tom discuss their 30-plus-year partnership and reveal their collaborative – for want of a better word – “process;” the ways in which neither of them are Mick Jagger; the time Tom opened for Bill Hicks; a history of ruining other things, like opera and Gershwin; memories of writing and filming the Chris Farley and Matthew Perry comedy Almost Heroes; and almost dying while researching Wild Men, their early-90s parody of Robert Bly’s Iron John. (Length 21:36)

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Banning “The Bible”

Last week was the tenth anniversary of “The Kerfuffles,” that time when our performance of The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) was banned by conservative politicians and then UNbanned when an international media storm arose. Co-authors Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, and Matt Croke – the show’s original cast (pictured above) – reminisce about the creation of the script, how it developed in workshop performances, and how the controversy was handled. Featuring the show’s big Broadway musical ending; conscious comic and commercial decisions; lost scenes and cut props; and the importance of always heeding the wisdom of former dean of Ringling Brothers Clown College Steve Smith. (Length 24:28)

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Scrooge To Scrooge

Larry Yando (left, above) discusses playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the Goodman Theatre production of A Christmas Carol with his “Alternate Scrooge,” the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s own Austin Tichenor. The two actors talk about the challenge of being haunted by the Ghost of Productions Past; how Dickens’s story continues to percolate in the off-season; how they navigate script changes, especially the little annoying ones; how Scrooge compares to some of the other great roles Yando’s played (such as Scar in The Lion King, Prospero, Roy Cohn in Angels in America); how seeing another actor play “your” role can sometimes act like “an undigested bit of beef;” why the story stays relevant year after year; the value of staying on your toes; how and why Scrooge chooses Marley over Belle; and how if A Christmas Carol ended 20 minutes earlier, it’d be King Lear. (Length 21:48)

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Bringing Back Comedy

The original cast (pictured, left to right: Reed Martin, Dominic Conti, and Austin Tichenor) returns to The Complete History of Comedy (abridged) for performances this April and July of 2023 and they discuss how both the show and their performances have changed; how different people can get away with different jokes; the value of bashing away at the material; the audacity of comparing ourselves to Shakespeare; how it’s our most autobiographical show; what it’s like to act with other companies like Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre; fixing certain punchlines; and a special appearance from Grammy Award-winning comedian “Weird Al” Yankovic! (Length 18:49)

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Episode 636. All Is True?

Dr. Paul Edmondson, the director of research for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-Upon-Avon, served as a historical consultant on Kenneth Branagh’s new film All Is True, an elegiac imagining of the final days of William Shakespeare. Paul discusses his role in the film’s production and how he came to be involved, and also shares backstage glimpses as to how and where the movie was filmed, insight into the film’s original impulses, some clearly lifelong passions, the presence of VIPs, a different key for Ben Elton to write about Shakespeare in than Upstart Crow, navigating hot spots, how research is helping us evolve our understanding of Shakespeare’s personal life, and how even a creative genius sometimes just needs to be professional, even in moments of great loss. Featuring a special appearance by (and extreme gratitude to) National Public Radio’s film critic Bob Mondello. (Length 24:02)

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Episode 346. Theatre In Prison

New York-based director Kate Powers talks about her recent production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town which she directed at the fabled maximum security Sing Sing Correctional Facility as part of her work with a program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts. Featuring themes of regret, artistic and practical challenges, how to stage a Read more…

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Episode 294. The Arts Theatre

LIVE! From backstage at this smallest of West End venues where theatrical milestones abound (including the English-language premiere of Waiting For Godot), we tell tales and share reminiscences about our two visits to this perfect “reduced theatre”. Featuring changes and differences, a special appearance from Rosie & Jessica’s Day of Read more…

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