Shakespeare in the world

Austin Tichenor makes the case for why we should say “Shakespeare is for anyone who wants him” instead of “Shakespeare is for everyone.”

Keith Hamilton Cobb reflects on his play American Moor and how the questions he received in response to it led to the development of the Untitled Othello Project, a deeply scrutinizing exploration of Shakespeare’s text.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is a layering of theatrical devices, a Hollywood riff on both a famous musical and a Shakespearean story for 21st-century audiences.

During the covid-19 pandemic, two methods of escape for me have been Shakespeare and depictions of fictional catastrophes, so you can imagine my excitement when I learned that a novel that combines both — Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven…

Duke Ellington includes “musical sonnets” in his 12-song Shakespeare jazz suite, Such Sweet Thunder. Learn more about this 1957 milestone in the story of jazz and Shakespeare from an interview with Douglas Lanier.

Austin Tichenor explores the copious Shakespearean echoes in HBO’s Succession series, in which the Shakespearean actor Brian Cox plays a key role.

Carla Della Gatta writes about Baz Luhrmann’s movie Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, which became an indelible version for Gen X, Gen Y, and even Gen Z. In homage to West Side Story, it Latin-izes the…

Austin Tichenor explores some surprising parallels between “Ted Lasso” and Shakespeare’s comedies, then tops off the post with paired quotes from both.

Sixty years old this week, the 1961 movie West Side Story, based on the acclaimed Broadway musical inspired by Romeo and Juliet, also became a de facto representation of US Latinx in musicals for many years.

How do Shakespeare’s plays reflect a life filled with plague outbreaks, asks Austin Tichenor — and do we see his plays in new ways now?

Actor Bill Pullman in a 2021 ad for Budweiser As proof that Shakespeare continues to inspire, one need look no further than a beer commercial that aired this past Fourth of July. Budweiser hired actor Bill Pullman to give a…

The conversation around Shakespeare and hip-hop to date has tended to focus on either their linguistic malleability or the racial politics which surround the enmeshment of an originally African-American cultural movement with the work of a white playwright who, in…