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BBC World Service: Living with Shakespeare

2016-09-08T09:00:00+00:00

Filming with Bollywood actor Kalki Koechlin in Mumbai

Jonathan Wells and Deborah Basckin are producers of 'Living Shakespeare', a series of programmes for BBC World Service, BBC World News television and bbc.com, in partnership with the British Council and Open University. Here they share the background to the series and contributors.

‘Excuse me, would you mind, like, saying some Shakespeare for the BBC? Just look into the lens. Yep, just like that, ok, thanks! Bye!’

That’s, honestly, what we’ve been doing the past few months. Asking people on the streets of Beirut, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Beijing to recite Shakespeare. And we’ve met with nothing but enthusiasm.

Because Shakespeare lives.

400 years on, and he’s on our stages, in our language and by our bedsides. And if Shakespeare lives, we thought, let’s put his words into the mouths of people around the world. Let’s show them actually LIVING Shakespeare.

And when the British Council and Open University approached the BBC World Service to transform the stories of distinguished people’s relationship with Shakespeare into TV, we jumped at the opportunity. The British Council asked several global luminaires to write an essay about their personal experiences of Shakespeare. It was our job to unravel 2,000 words and bring them to the screen.

Cameraman Chris West talking with Dr Kani in Johannesburg

We chose five cultural figures from a variety of professions from across the continents, all with an illuminating tale to tell. For them, Shakespeare was more than a touchstone for universal experiences, his work and its impact related to specific historic moments in their lives and their countries.

We divided the contributors between us and travelled as teams of two to meet our illustrious collaborators.

When Dr John Kani played Othello in Johannesburg during apartheid, he wasn’t just playing a role. He was defying a government, 'tackling racism head on’. When he walks the streets of Joburg in our film, he talks us through the change he sees – with some help from the city’s residents – but also asks if, like Iago, racism is left alive.

Shakespeare was banned during the Cultural Revolution and a total mystery for author Hong Ying when young. She remembers her neighbour being arrested for being gay and having a copy of ‘these things called sonnets’. As China opened up to the world, Shakespeare was heralded as a hero for underground artists, and today, as her friends explain in our film, the sonnets really resonate with the growing openly gay community in Beijing.

Dame Evelyn Glennie was kind enough to take us into her home to demonstrate some of the instruments she’d use to paint the ‘sound colours’ of Shakespeare’s Tempest. With her deafness no impediment to the noise and music in Shakespeare, she ties her own experience of growing up in Aberdeenshire to hear through her bones and muscles.

‘We’re all modern Ophelias,’ according to Kalki Koechlin. As one of the most visible actors in India today, she’s had firsthand experience wrestling the double standards to which women are held. Lauded by fans, castigated by critics, life as a Bollywood actress in Mumbai is anything but straightforward. Filming with Kalki, talking to Mumbaikars, it’s clear the parallels between India’s women and Ophelia in Hamlet are real.

Producer Jonathan Wells with cameramen Derrick Evans and Nicholas Hameon and the Caracalla dance company in Beirut

The Bard spent his so-called missing years in the Middle-East - so says choreographer Alissar Caracalla. In Lebanon, a country that has seen too much conflict and pain, dance, like Shakespeare, is a unifying force. Devised in the mountains during the closing months of the Lebanese civil war, her production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Nineties became a seminal moment in her company’s 50 years’ history. Alissar Caracalla speaks of the power of Shakespeare and dance, a magical combination that can provide hope in seemingly hopeless times.

These films are unusual yet extremely powerful thanks to the figures who’ve allowed us to hear their stories of living Shakespeare. We have ended up with a series that we hope really illustrates the continued influence of Britain’s greatest export.

Go on, give it a try: wherever you travel, wherever you are, ask someone to recite a couple of lines. See what happens.

The Living Shakespeare series went live on bbc.com/livingshakespeare on 5 September. BBC World News television will broadcast one episode a week at 05.55, 10.55, 12.55, 15.50 and 18.55 GMT. The films are made in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and English - and are translated for use across BBC World Service's multiple language outputs.

Jonathan Wells and Deborah Basckin are producers of 'Living Shakespeare'.

Directing BBC One's A Midsummer Night's Dream: Power, love, and the power of love

2016-05-27T11:57:59+00:00

Matt Lucas as Bottom

Shakespeare's popular comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream forms part of our celebrations of the Bard's work. We spoke to director David Kerr about his work on Russell T Davies' adaptation of Shakespeare's play. Watch the production on BBC One at 8.30pm on Monday 30 May 2016.

What is your role in Midsummer Night’s Dream?

As the director, it’s my job to bring the script to life on the screen.

Russell T Davies’ script is a terrifically bold adaptation of Shakespeare’s original, true to Shakespeare’s language, and a heady blend of action, drama and comedy.

What was really vital for me was how the comedy might play, and specifically what the right tone for the comedy might be. You can’t assume that the comedy in a production like this will take care of itself; that funny words will simply transmute into a funny scene. I had to work with the actors to find the right pitch for performance. There are scenes of high farce and physical comedy, where choices about how the action is staged and shot have a direct bearing on how funny it is. There are scenes of verbal sparring, where timing is critical. And that’s something I refined in the edit, with the help of the brilliant editor, Philip Kloss.

David Kerr and Russell T Davies on set during filming of A Midsummer Night's Dream

In rehearsal and throughout the shoot, I helped the actors unpack the Shakespearean language so that the meaning was clear - and the comedy landed.

I was very closely involved in the casting process, casting the right actors and bringing them together as an ensemble.

I’d worked a couple of times before with the amazing Matt Lucas, so we had a good rapport, and once with the wonderful Elaine Paige. The rest of the cast were new to me, but it was a tremendous privilege to work with actors I’d admired for years - and some who are really just starting out, but have enormous talent.

Why did you want to be part of the project?

As a director, I can’t resist a challenge. This was certainly a challenge: one of the best-loved plays ever written; a hugely ambitious adaptation that takes in high comedy, high octane action and really poignant drama; and it had to be entertaining enough to work on primetime on the BBC’s main channel for a mainstream, family audience.

Theseus played by John Hannah

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a wonderfully rich story with a set of contrasting worlds: The Court of Athens re-imagined as a repressive fascist state; the world of the forest and its fairies, a wild place, elemental, and unpredictable; and the humble world of the working town where The Mechanicals live.

One of the challenges was to render each of these worlds on screen with as much richness and cinematic scale as possible - on a television budget. I didn’t want it to be the kind of production based on pointing cameras at a stage where actors stood stiffly orating. I wanted it to be fun, never boring - and to look spectacular.

Magic applied on set during filming of A Midsummer Night's Dream

Magic is so integral to the story that Visual FX were a must. I collaborated with VFX Designer Rob Harvey, who won an Oscar for Gladiator. But I wanted some of those magical and exotic elements to be practical, built into the sets and lighting, like Powell & Pressburger did with films like Black Narcissus - so many years before CGI was an option - andI had the help of a really inventive Production Designer, Michael Pickwoad, who not only designs Dr Who, but designed one of my all-time favourite films, Withnail & I.

We shot some of our forest scenes out on location, and some in a forest set we built in the studios at Cardiff. Matching those studio and location scenes so they were seamless in terms of look and lighting was tricky, so huge credit goes to my DoP, Dale McCready.

What is it about ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ that excites and appeals to audiences?

I hope that people will be excited by the visual style, the richness of the sets, costumes and FX, the power of Murray Gold’s score…but above all, I want the audience to connect with the characters: Young characters behaving foolishly, in love – that’s something any of us can connect with; then there are the supernatural creatures: Titania, Oberon and Puck in the forest. They’re fascinating and strange and they play havoc with human behaviour.

There’s so much more to this production than dialogue: clifftop chases, full-on stunts, even a huge music and dance finale.

Russell has expanded upon the original play, making Theseus - who’s a bit bland in Shakespeare’s text - a sadist and dictator who rules his state with a rod of iron.

Flute, Snug, Starveling, Mistress Quince & Snout Played by Fisayo Akinade, Javone Prince, Richard Wilson, Elaine Paige & Bernard Cribbins

But in addition to our bold characters, we’ve also got some hilarious ones. When you’ve got Matt Lucas playing Bottom, Bernard Cribbins, Richard Wilson, and Elaine Paige, it’s inevitable you’re going to laugh. Just to be able to spend time watching these people as a viewer, I defy anyone not to laugh.

What do you want viewers to take away from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’?

I would love people to be amazed. I would love anyone who was expecting A Midsummer Night’s Dream to be a bit stiff and stodgy to be astonished and delighted, to find it exciting, joyous, full of drama - and funny’.

Describe ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in one sentence.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is about love, it’s about power, and it’s about the power of love.

Russell T Davies’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on BBC One at 8.30pm
Discover more of our Shakespeare celebrations on the Shakespeare Lives website
Read Helen Boaden’s blog about our Shakespeare programming in 2016

BBC Shakespeare Archive Resource

2016-05-24T11:59:27+00:00

Back in January, as part of the launch of the BBC Shakespeare Festival 2016, BBC Director General Sir Tony Hall announced a new BBC Shakespeare Archive Resource. The idea of the web portal was to offer unique access for colleges, universities and schools to hundreds of BBC television and radio broadcasts of Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets and documentaries.

That resource is now live online: http://shakespeare.ch.bbc.co.uk/ and very simple to use. Anyone in formal UK education can apply for a log in, and once they have that, they can access hundreds of TV and radio programmes from the BBC’s Shakespeare collection, for streamed playback in an educational setting, such as in a classroom, lecture theatre or for academic research, as well as more than a thousand photos from classic Shakespeare productions.

The site is very easy to navigate, and you can perform general searches - by play title, character or even actor; or browse through different categories (like 'Plays', 'Sonnets and Poems', 'Factual' and 'Entertainment'). There's also a wealth of external links and resources avialable too.

Find out more and sign up at the BBC Shakespeare Archive Resource.

Read also Every Shakespeare play in pictures for the Bard's 400th anniversary
See more Shakespeare related blog on About the BBC

Shake it Up Shakespeare

2016-05-20T16:03:16+00:00

We’ve done it to Strictly, to Doctor Who and to EastEnders, now we’re doing it to Shakespeare. Britain’s cultural icons are becoming putty in the hands of a new young generation of digital dynamos!

Shakespeare was the ultimate story-teller and his plays have a universal resonance, but many young people struggle with the language.

So we are challenging teenagers to take Shakespeare’s canon by the scruff of the neck and experiment. Using ‘ShakeItUp’, which is on the BBC’s creativity website Mixital, they’ll be able to play with locations, characters and dialogue. They’ll find the basic Shakespearean ingredients there and be able to mix them up and make them their own. They can then give famous scenes a fresh, contemporary twist.

Last week we brought a group of Year 10 pupils into New Broadcasting House to try out the ShakeItUp tool. At the beginning, most of them said they thought Shakespeare was boring or difficult to understand, but within a few hours of designing their own scenes from Macbeth there was a real buzz in the room.

Purists don’t be alarmed! We believe taking the Bard and shaking him up is one incredibly powerful way to help youngsters engage with his work. If we can succeed in persuading any young person, disillusioned with Shakespeare to change their mind, I feel we will have achieved our aim.

To try out the tool, my colleague Jon Howard, Executive Product Manager for Digital Creativity, offered the teenagers three scenes from Macbeth for them to ‘mash-up’: the witches’ scene; the dagger scene and; Lady Macbeth going mad. The youngsters quickly learned how to manipulate the characters and write dialogue to create 'playlets' of their own.

By the end of the afternoon, they were writing a whole scene, on the theme of ‘What would you be prepared to do to fulfill your ambition?’

I was impressed by the results. Suddenly the story of Macbeth was no longer just about an archaic Scottish king, but modern tales of ruthless ambition and the descent into evil.

Jon also took the youngsters through a reverse exercise, ‘translating’ modern dialogue from films like the Lion King and The Hunger Games into Shakespear-ese. In a very short space of time we had them writing their own Shakespearean style dialogue in iambic pentameter and having a good laugh along the way!

We were joined for part of it by Director-General Tony Hall who chatted with them about Shakespeare, ‘ShakeItUp’ and telling stories in new, digital ways.

As the project rolls out, the material teenagers create can be uploaded to the Mixital site. The army of aspiring directors can then get instant feed-back from their peers, who can in turn take any project and build on it to create another version, and another.

Teenagers are consuming online all the time; the challenge is how to help them become more active, creative participants. They may be daunted by the array of sophisticated games and experiences available and not know how to start making their own. We believe the Mixital platform is the place to begin, so eventually they will be armed with the tools to construct new creations online. By the time they leave school or college be a step closer to filling the thousands of job vacancies in the digital world.

ShakeItUp is part of the Shakespeare Lives festival, an international online festival celebrating the 400th anniversary of Britain’s most revered playwright. The festival is a unique partnership between the BBC and the British Council together with Shakespeare’s Globe, the British Film Institute, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hay Festivals and the Royal Opera House. Together we hope the festival can stretch the globe and reach new audiences who otherwise wouldn’t be engaged by the Bard.

We're encouraging users of ShakeItUp, their schools or organisations to share their work and get themselves noticed. We’ll be sharing the best and most interesting creations submitted between 23rd-30th May on social media - anyone can take part.

Martin Wilson is Head of Product Digital Creativity

Shake it Up lets you remix the work of the Bard. Cast a scene, give it your own spin and invent new endings by visiting Mixital.co.uk
Read more about Mixital.co.uk on the BBC Internet Blog

Celebrating Shakespeare

2016-04-22T15:17:29+00:00

It was a wonderful teacher who unlocked the magic of Shakespeare for me by bringing his work to life. That is what the BBC aims to do this 400th anniversary weekend with help from stars like Dame Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adrian Lester, Meera Syaal and many, many more.

Our big ambition for the 400th anniversary is to make Shakespeare’s work irresistible to all our audiences. I truly believe our festival will offer something for everyone. This weekend audiences can join us through live events in Stratford, Birmingham and elsewhere in the West Midlands, or via landmark dramas with the best of British acting talent, through learning events up and down the country, new documentaries into the world of Shakespeare, musical collaborations and a myriad of children’s projects online.

Benedict Cumberbatch, Judi Dench and Hugh Bonneville star in The Hollow Crown: War of the Roses

It really is a fresh look at Shakespeare for everyone. We have landmark television dramas like the reimagined Midsummer Night’s Dream on BBC One, adapted by Russell T Davies and starring Maxine Peake as Titania and Matt Lucas as Bottom.

Over on BBC Two this May, The Hollow Crown: War of the Roses, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s History Plays stars Tom Sturridge as Henry VI and Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III.

Upstart Crow also on BBC Two is written by Ben Elton and is a comedy based on Shakespeare’s life starring David Mitchell as Shakespeare.

Meanwhile in factual programming on BBC One, The Best Bottoms in the Land (the character, not the posterior variety) follows the Royal Shakespeare Company’s search for actors across the UK to play Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Over on BBC Four Redefining Juliet follows the Creative Director and wheelchair user Storme Toolis (above) and her cast of actors, all with disabilities and differences in the lead role, as they attempt to bring a new interpretation of Romeo and Juliet to the stage.

The celebrations start this weekend. On Saturday 23 April at 8:30pm we’ll have a very ambitious live event broadcast on BBC Two and around the world called Shakespeare Live! From the RSC hosted by David Tennant and Catherine Tate. The show celebrates Shakespeare’s plays and their enduring influence on all performance art forms - from opera to jazz, dance to musicals. It features a staggering list of acting talent including Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Helen Mirren, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tim Minchin, John Lithgow, David Suchet, Rory Kinnear, Joseph Fiennes, the cast of ‘Horrible Histories’. Partners who are working with us include The Royal Ballet, English National Opera (ENO), Birmingham Royal Ballet and Stratford-upon-Avon’s Orchestra of the Swan amongst others.

For the first time in a single documentary, Arena explores the rich, global history of Shakespeare in the cinema, with a treasure trove of film extracts and archival interviews with their creators.This still shows Sir Laurence Olivier talking to Kenneth Tynan. 'Arena: All the World's a Screen - Shakespeare on Film' is on Sunday 24 April, 9pm on BBC Four.

In radio, broadcasting live from a pop-up studio, BBC Radio 3 is resident in Stratford with Sounds of Shakespeare, looking at his culture through music and performance. Highlights include the premiere of a new work by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, as well as performances from the BBC Singers from Guild Chapel and Rufus Wainwright will perform in a special World on 3. In the oncoming weeks there will also be new plays including Naomi Alderman's

In the weeks that follow there will also be new plays including Naomi Alderman's Wolf on Water which imagines a world for Shylock’s daughter, reimagined sonnets set to music by the BBC Philharmonic, and there’s an all Scottish production of King Lear featuring Ian McDiarmid’s first ever casting as Lear.

Over on BBC Radio 4 they look at love across the racial divide in Shakespeare’s plays as well as his influence in India and relevance today.

Alongside our broadcasting, we’ll be experimenting live with digital formats like never before through Shakespeare Day Live, which launches a six-month online festival in partnership with the British Council bringing together the most comprehensive collection of interpretations of Shakespeare’s work in one digital space. We’re aiming to bring the best of Shakespeare to the world for over six months. Highlights of Shakespeare Lives will be made available on BBC iPlayer and it is also the first time programmes from not-for-profit arts organisations will have been brought to wider audiences through the BBC in this way. Infrared analysis of ‘Will’s Will’ uncovers new secrets about Shakespeare, you can download emojis to liven up texts and tweets, and BBC Sport are encouraging those running marathons this weekend and participating in other sporting events to generate bespoke inspirational quotes through #shakespeareme.

Online contributions for Shakespeare Lives come from the Royal Opera House, Shakespeare’s Globe, the BFI, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Hay Festival and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The cast lined-up for the festival includes Mel Giedroyc, Meera Syal, Peter Capaldi, Adrian Lester, Germaine Greer, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Russell Beale, Lauren Cuthbertson, Edward Watson, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, amongst many others bbc.co.uk/shakespearelives.

Like a great play, we could not put on this extravaganza without a remarkable cast of players. We’ve worked with some of the best partners in the business for our celebrations including the Royal Shakespeare Company, The British Council, the Royal Opera House, Hay Festival and the British Film Institute.

We all want more people to enjoy Shakespeare than ever before by interpreting his work in bold ways and placing it at the heart of the schedules – across TV, radio and online – and we hope that audiences will enjoy discovering new, exciting aspects and interpretations of arguably the greatest playwright who ever lived.

Whilst I’ve run through some of the highlights in this blog, there’s so much more to see and do, so I urge everyone to look online at our Festival overview.

It’s truly extraordinary to see the organisation coming together in this way. David Tennant eloquently said back at our launch in January that the characters in Shakespeare’s stories are 'catnip for actors'. My hope is that our celebrations and interpretations of Shakespeare’s work will be so irresistible they will be catnip for our audiences too.

CBeebies A Midsummer Night's Dream come true

2016-04-22T14:27:35+00:00

Ahead of the broadcast on Saturday 23 April of CBeebies A Midsummer Night's Dream, we spoke to the controller of the channel, Kay Benbow about how the production came into being:

Where did the idea for a CBeebies production of Shakespeare come from?

I heard everyone talk excitedly about the plans around this year’s 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. It all sounded marvellous - I love the theatre and although I'm not an expert, I've learnt to love Shakespeare as I've got older. I always enjoyed it but I think is one of those things you have to experience, and go and see it to appreciate it and understand it. I started thinking just how CBeebies could be a part of the celebrations.

I thought to begin with about the things we have done on CBeebies - the way we did our Christmas show and a few years ago when we produced a version of A Christmas Carol, very much an adaptation and very much more theatrical. I also thought about our CBeebies drama’s Topsy and Tim and Katie Morag. We have all that talent, I thought, and we're good at telling stories. We know how to put on a show, we've done adaptations. I pondered what Shakespeare was if not a brilliant storyteller. Why couldn’t we just tell a story in a CBeebies way?

We had already produced CBeebies ballets where we partnered with Northern Ballet to make a version that was accessible to our viewers, where one of our CBeebies characters explained the story to the children. We thought that that was the starting point.
The in-house CBeebies production team Alison Stewart, Tony Reed and Angela Young have done the most wonderful job, working up what I think is a brilliant adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We’re combining the CBeebies stars our viewers will recognises such as Stephen Kynman, Justin Fletcher, Ben Faulks, Cook and Line, Andy Day, Rebecca Keatley, Pui Fan Lee and Chris Jarvis with members of the RSC too. We also are delighted that Josette Simon and Roger Griffiths are playing Titania and Oberon. There’s going to be a wonderful mixture.

This external content is available at its source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umcn-JmmWX4

Creatively do you get that extra push of motivation because perhaps people make assumptions that CBeebies can’t do certain things?

I love doing things that surprise and so far the audience have just lapped it up. Like when we saw what the Northern Ballet were doing for very young audiences. The next thing you know we'd done a production of the ballet The Ugly Duckling and it won a BAFTA.

I think that a lot of people think you can’t do Shakespeare for pre-schoolers. I think that’s more that people aren't sure how it can be done. But, the minute you start thinking about it, it sort of becomes obvious, because Shakespeare plays, just like anything, are just about telling stories

Is there something about the receptiveness of the CBeebies audience that makes Shakespeare as a first experience all the more immediate?

I think there is, yes. They have no preconceptions. If it's a great story, it’s a great story back to that: Children are totally open, then adults change their views, and it is a huge responsibility. CBeebies is about opening up opportunities and experiences to our audience. I think it’s very empowering for them.

If we regularly did Shakespeare like this for a young audience, we'd have a whole generation of children growing up knowing the stories, and loving the language. Shakespeare should be performed, it shouldn't just be sweated over in the classroom. It's physical, it's brilliant language and they’re great, great stories.

So it's challenging a lot of our adult perceptions about Shakespeare too?

Absolutely. And I think that's fine, and actually quite a lot of adults struggle with Shakespeare because they’re intimidated by it. But, when you see it performed, although you may not understand every word, you absolutely understand what's going on. If you just read it, it can be a bit of a struggle, but if it's well performed and they do the language properly you can follow what's going on from the rhythm.

What we have to remember is Shakespeare was popular. Shakespeare was for everybody. There were lots of in-jokes and references to things everyone would understand at the time.

What did you have to change in order to make this for CBeebies?

Obviously it's a much shortened version. The performance is 45 minutes and it tells only the basic story. There are key scenes in there and we use Shakespearian language, but there are also established CBeebies characters like Steve Kynman (Robert the Robot from Justin’s House) who's playing Shakespeare and Swashbuckles’ Cook and Line acting as trusted guides for what’s going on on stage. We've also had special songs written so that helps with explaining the story.

There is supporting content on all the other platforms as well. We’ve got a 'Behind the Scenes' section online, and there are members of the RSC talking about why this is important that they get to know the language and get a sense of the love they have of it. I’m hoping our viewers will be able to get enjoyment out of whatever level they choose.

The cast performing at The Everyman Theatre in Liverpool

What were the challenges you faced making this?

My worry was that people might say we've only just scratched the surface. I didn't want people thinking we'd dumbed down, and I don't think we have. We've got the language in there and what's wonderful is the children do follow the story. They followed the magic.

What do you experience when you witness members of the audience loving the thing that you've made?

A really brilliant moment of the play was when Puck has to get the magical flower and he throws it to Oberon. There was some theatrical visual trickery and the performers did it so beautifully that the children audibly gasped. They saw it, they understood it, and they also reacted to the magic of the theatre. They were completely immersed.

Witnessing the audience’s reactions I experienced enormous pride. It's emotional. I was very close to crying at the end. It's that feeling of doing something really, really special. It is unbridled joy when you watch the audience and you think ‘Yes, they've got it.’

You just never know for sure it’s going to work. It's not always plain sailing. There are always challenges. What was lovely was that after the performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Everyman, I went to see the cast and crew afterwards. Absolutely everybody said that it was such a special thing to be part of. That's when you know you've done something right.

Where do you get your energy from?

It’s funny, just before we started talking I commented on how tired I am, I haven't stopped all day. Talking to you about CBeebies however, the energy comes back, because I love what I do. Let's be honest, it isn't just me: I have fantastic people working with me. I hope that what I do is encourage them to be passionate and give their best to the audience. The audience always drives everything for me and I’m an absolute believer in you give the youngest the very best and that is what makes the impact.

I believe that what I've done as Controller of CBeebies over the last six years is help to create a multi-genre channel. We connect with the harder to reach audiences, because we allow children and families to see themselves reflected back in what we do, from observational documentaries like Our Family, to Magic Hands a programme for deaf children but which is totally inclusive - there are five Shakespeare episodes of Magic Hands that are also part of the CBeebies Shakespeare content, they’re equally beautifully produced and also include the Shakespearian language.

I do look at CBeebies and think I wish it was around when my boys where little. It's the most joyful channel, and we get so much praise from parents and viewers alike.

Kay Benbow is Controller of CBeebies.

CBeebies A Midsummer Night's Dream will be broadcast on CBeebies at 11am and 4.30pm on Saturday 23 April.

Every Shakespeare play in pictures for the Bard's 400th anniversary

2016-04-22T07:00:00+00:00

Saturday marks Shakespeare's birthday and 400 years since his death, so we have trawled the archive and picked one image from a BBC production of each of his 37 plays to mark the occasion.

Alls well That Ends Well - Ian Charleson as Bertram, Donald Sinden as the King of France and Pippa Guard (1981)

Antony and Cleopatra - Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Peter Finchfor the Home Service (1965)

As you like it - Helena Bonham Carter in studio during the recording for As You Like It, as part of Shakespeare Day on Radio 3 (2000)

Comedy of Errors – Luciana (Jane Wenham) and Adriana (Joan Plowright) (1954)

Coriolanus – Alan Howard as Caius Martinus Coriolanus (1984)

Cymbeline - Helen Mirren as Imogen (1983)

Hamlet – Derek Jacobi (1980)

Henry IV, Part 1 : Jeremy Irons as Henry IV (2012)

Henry IV, Part 2 : Robert Hardy as Prince Hal and Tom Fleming as the dying King Henry IV (1960)

Henry V - Tom Hiddleston as Henry V (2012)

Henry VI, Part 1 - Brenda Blethyn as Joan La Pucelle (1983)

Henry VI : Part 2 (1983)

Henry VI, Part 3 - Jerome Willis as Lord Clifford, Terry Wale as Rutland (1960)

Henry VIII - Sir Laurence Olivier as Porter, Paul Scofield as the Duke of Norfolk, Robert Donat as Cranmer for the BBC Home Service (1954)

Julius Caesar - Virginia McKenna as Portia, Richard Pasco as Marcus Brutus, Keith Michell (stood in background) as Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony), Elizabeth Spriggs as Calpurnia and Charles Gray as Julius Caesar (1979)

King John - Leonard Rossiter as King John (1984)

King Lear - Sir John Gielgud as King Lear and Emma Thompson as Cordelia for Radio 3 (1994)

Love's Labours Lost - Maureen Lipman as the Princess of France and Jenny Agutter as Rosaline (1984)

Macbeth - Brenda Bruce as First Witch (1983)

Measure for Measure - Kate Nelligan as Isabella (1979)

Merchant of Venice - Warren Mitchell as Shylock (1980)

Merry Wives of Windsor - Ann Page (Elizabeth Regan) and Fenton (Peter Rendall) (1952)

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Jeremy Spenser as Puck (1950)

Much Ado About Nothing - Robert Lindsay as Benedick and Cherie Lunghi as Beatrice (1984)

Othello - Gordon Heath as Othello (1955)

Pericles - Patrick Godfrey as Helicanus, Amanda Redman as Marina, Patrick Ryecat as Lysimachus Mike Gwilym as Pericles and Juliet Stephenson as Thaisa (1984)

Richard II - Ian McKellen as Richard II (with Timothy West as Bollingbroke behind his left shoulder) (1970)

Richard III - The Duke of Richmond, played by Eric Porter, kneeling at the body of Richard III, played by Ian Holm (1964)

Romeo and Juliet - Rehearsing for the broadcast of a Hindustani verse translation of Romeo and for BBC Eastern Service: Santosh Kashyap, Hafeez Javed, Gaular Javed, Aslam Malik (producer) (1947)

The Taming of the Shrew - John Cleese as Petruchio and Sarah Badel as Katherine (1980)

The Tempest - David Dixon as Ariel and Michael Horden as Prospero with film crew on set at Television Centre (1980)

Timon of Athens - Norman Rodway as Apemantus and Jonathan Pryce as Timon (1981)

Titus Andronicus - Michael Crompton as Chiron, Hugh Quarshie as Aaron, Neil McCaul as Demetrius (1985)

Troilus and Cressida - Paterson Joseph plays Troilus, Nikki Amuka-Bird is Cressida and Derek Griffiths plays Pandarus (2005)

Twelfth Night - Sinead Cusack as Olivia and Felicity Kendal as Viola (1980)

The Two Gentlemen of Verona - David Collings as Thurio (1983)

The Winters Tale - Robert Shaw as Leontes and Rosalie Crutchley as Hermione (1962)

If you are part of a school, FE college or a university you can sign up to the BBC Shakespeare Archive Resource to find BBC TV and radio programmes of Shakespeare’s plays, poems and sonnets.
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Taking Shakespeare on Tour with BBC Local Radio

2016-03-21T09:06:59+00:00

When we think of William Shakespeare we invariably link the great man to either his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon, or with London and the place to which he is most famously acquainted, The Globe Theatre.

So it came as somewhat of a surprise to the team working on the Shakespeare on Tour project to discover just how much Shakespeare and the different companies in which he was involved toured all corners of England - both during the Bard’s own lifetime and in the years following his death in 1616.

Shakespeare on Tour is a hugely ambitious new project which tracks the explosion in the performance of the Bard’s works from his own lifetime to the present day.

It’s led by the BBC’s English Regions in a partnership with the British Library and a group of internationally-based academics who have been studying Shakespeare’s touring companies over the last FORTY years (as part of a wider project called The Records of Early English Drama – or REED.)

We will be telling around 200 stories and it’s one of our big contributions to the BBC’s coverage of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death this year…a curtain-raiser to the main season.

BBC Local Radio and regional news

With the help of our local journalists, BBC Local Radio stations and regional television news will be broadcasting some of the most compelling local Shakespearean stories until the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death on Saturday 23 April.

BBC Radio Oxford reveals that in 1610 Shakespeare’s Company performed Othello in Oxford while the Bard himself was still acting.The documented appearance in Oxford of Shakespeare’s leading acting company of the day, The King’s Men, in 1610, is one of those rare moments we are able to pinpoint not only where the players performed and precisely when, but also the play they performed -Othello.

BBC Radio Merseyside will be delving into the story of actress Sarah Siddons who played Hamlet in Liverpool in 1778. At a time when actresses were still associated with prostitutes, Siddons took pains to lead an exemplary life as a respectable married woman.

Although her husband was a respected actor, she was really the family’s breadwinner, the brighter talent and the bigger draw at the box office.

Siddons’ ground-breaking Hamlet extended the possibilities for actresses on stage and paved the way for a flock of others to follow suit.

Frances De La Tour and Maxine Peake are just two of the actresses who’ve tackled the role of Hamlet while Fiona Shaw and Frances Barber have played other male roles.

BBC Radio Newcastle recounts the child prodigy actor who prepared to retire at the age of 11 as he headlined in Newcastle in 1830.

The phenomenon of young actors playing Shakespeare was sweeping across the country and audiences eagerly sought out the latest child sensation. These entertainers made a fortune for their families until the novelty of their performances wore off and they were usurped by younger rivals.

Master W.R Grossmith was one of a number of 19th century children playing prominent acting roles in Shakespeare and other plays across the country. Here we see him saying farewell as he prepares to step down from the stage, aged just 11.

BBC Radio Devon tells the story of the first professional black Shakespearean actor, who starred in a play in Devonport. Ira Aldridge was an African-American who played Shylock, Richard the Third and Macbeth. But he was best-known for his Othello, for which he received mixed reviews in London, but was a huge success in the English provinces. This playbill dated 1846 from the British Library collection promotes Ira’s range of characters.

To help bring these stories to life we worked closely with two fantastic organisations – Records of Early English Drama (REED) and the British Library.

Records of Early English Drama (REED)

The details of Shakespeare’s touring have been brought to light partly thanks to a forty-year academic research project which painstakingly delves into the records kept in town halls or other civic places – documents which tell us which acting groups performed in the town, when, and even how much they were paid.

This piece of work identifies acting groups to which Shakespeare was most closely associated performing towns across the country. Among the references in town records are visits from acting companies such as Pembroke’s Men, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and finally the company for which Shakespeare wrote most of his plays, ….the King’s Men.

Not only do some records reveal how much such troupes were paid, they can also start to explain why they happened to be there – hints at how they were treated by the town authorities. Academics can also speculate about which plays they might have performed, and – most tantalisingly of all – whether Shakespeare himself was with the company, perhaps himself performing.

This gives rise to some amazing stories…how Shakespeare’s company the King’s Men were turned away from his home town of Stratford…how the plague would have had an influence on the players hitting the road to go on a massive regional tour…how his players trod established routes and seem to return again and again to certain places (Ipswich, ten times!)

British Library Playbills

We also tracked how Shakespeare was embraced during subsequent centuries…by the Victorians…and through more modern interpretations.

These performances out in the ‘provinces of England’ as they were then called, show Shakespeare becoming increasingly revered by the emerging theatre network across the country. And how do we know this? Because thousands upon thousands of theatre playbills have been kept and preserved from the 18th and 19th centuries by the British Library.

These playbills reveal how fame was the prize for those gaining a reputation for brilliance as a Shakespearean actor, particularly in London. But we also see Shakespeare reaching different communities outside of the star-spangled capital. Some performances are especially for farming communities…others for masonic lodges…and in other playbills we see Shakespeare scenes performed almost as a variety night for the masses.

Using these fantastic twin sources of the REED project and the British Library playbills, Shakespeare on Tour is able to tease out for audiences some of the iconic moments in the performance of Shakespeare from his day and on into the late 19th century.

All the stories are illustrated with some amazing images from the time - with thanks to the many partner organisations helping us to overcome the huge challenge of illustrating these stories with pictures.

We hope you enjoy the tour.

Craig Henderson is Head of Programming, English Regions.

Read Shakespeare on Tour stories online from Monday 21 March
BBC English Regions will also be covering the RSC’s current tour of the country performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, using amateur performers in key roles as they tour the country
Discover more about our Shakespeare season at www.bbc.co.uk/shakespeare
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