Up Coming Projects 2024
John Lydgate: Monk of Bury St Edmunds
Join the Beyond Shakespeare team in a celebration of the work of John Lydgate, medieval writer from Bury St Edmunds. He wrote celebrations for monarchs, for civic functions, and for religious festivals – for a local audience and the court. A mix of history, literature and drama, recording live as a radio show for the Beyond Shakespeare podcast in the atmospheric and historic location of the Farmers Club in Bury St Edmunds.
Join us as we explore the verse, the spectacle, and the history of our monk of Bury St Edmunds.
Performing in the Bury St Edmunds & Farmers Club on Saturday 25th May from 7.30pm
Bury St Edmunds & Farmers Club, 10 Northgate Street, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP33 1HQ
Middleton’s Endgame: A Game at Chess at 400
We’re also running a pop up Middleton festival, Middleton’s Endgame: A Game at Chess at 400, at The White Bear in Kennington, featuring a live performance of A Game at Chess, discussions of the play, a look at Middleton’s last public work, the 1626 Lord Mayor’s show, and other selections of writing from across his life. The event will run on the afternoon of Sunday 11th August from 1pm till late. Get first in line for tickets, and be in on all the plans by signing up here.
At the same time as these live celebrations, we working on something on the aftermath of this monumental run at the Globe, as well releasing a full cast audio adaptation for the podcast. These will come out from late August through to November, precise timings to follow.
Recent Past Events
The Theatrical Legacy of Thomas Middleton
Tuesday 23rd April at 7pm (BST) – Online Event Celebrating the Publication of The Theatrical Legacy of Thomas Middleton, 1624-2024
Featuring William David Green, Anna L. Hegland, Sam Jermy, and host Robert Crighton – The Theatrical Legacy of Thomas Middleton, 1624-2024 marks the 400th anniversary of Middleton’s final and most contentious work for the public theatres, A Game at Chess (1624), presenting readers with a celebration of the impact and lasting salience of Middleton’s body of dramatic works from 1624 up to the present day. This live event brings the editors of this collection together to discuss Middleton, and the book they have produced.
The Fall of Richard the Second – An Evening of History, Drama and Literature
Richard II was a king whose life was frequently held up as a lesson to future generations. The boy king who put down the Peasant’s Revolt, who sold his kingdom from under him to his favourites, and who was finally deposed. His story, and what it meant, was argued over by writers in the then famous collection A Mirror for Magistrates – which summoned the ghosts of historical figures past, and questioned them from the present. See the ghosts of figures in his life come alive once more, as a warning against the fall of princes.
Performed at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury on Thursday 11th April at 7.30pm.
The Winter Revels 2023 – Last year our patrons voted for us to record a host of new shows – The Tragedy of Dido by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe, The Old Wives’ Tale by George Peele, Arden of Faversham, and Cleopatra by Samuel Daniel. We’ve added Beware the Cat by William Baldwin to the mix and created a whole Winter Revels season in December – which went really well. So much so, we hope to do it all again with a new line up of plays.
Recently, we have produced a some live streaming events, still available in their rough form – Occupation and Idleness on Sunday 22nd October at 2.30pm, and the 1623 Lord Mayor’s Show on Sunday 29th October at 2.30pm.
We have just finished our first proper live theatre show, performing Bosworth Field by Sir John Beaumont, as well as background to the poem. Bosworth Field: An Evening of History, Drama and Literature, performed at the Quay Theatre at Sudbury, Suffolk on 20th July 2023. More on our Bosworth Page. The recording will be available soon.
We’re recently gone live with internet only shows, with more to come – in April we live streamed a recording session for Iphigenia as translated by Lady Jane Lumley – it wasn’t the full production, just a stream of a run for recording, with the final edit coming out later in the year – but this rough test is available for our patrons on our patreon feed.
Iphigenia will join the release in 2023 of The Tragedy of Mariam and The Tragedy of Antony, completing our initial trilogy of early modern women’s writing – with other texts to join them in the works.
Future Live Streams – we will be holding semi-regular live streaming events like Iphigenia in the autumn, go to our live events page for more.
(Kinda) Still available to watch – The Ghost of Richard III
There is a full video of The Ghost of Richard III, the world premiere of this adaptation was performed on Tuesday 21st July at 7.00pm, in support of the Quay theatre during the middle period between total lockdowns during the plague. It was available on YouTube from the original stream, but that has since been deleted (which is a shame, there were stats on that stream we wanted to collate… sigh) – but we think it is still on facebook – and we will release it ourselves in the future.
Get Involved! Join In Online
We’re running exploring sessions online weekdays from 2pm and 7pm UK time – to get involved and read along with a play next week, then sign up today! Full details on the exploring page where you can sign up for the next sessions.
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The ‘Beyond Shakespeare’ Podcast – A (Sort of) Mission Statement
From the earliest drama in English, to the closing of the theatres in 1642, there was a hell of a lot of drama produced – and a lot of it wasn’t by just one guy.
Apart from a few noble exceptions, every-other-plays are often passed over, ignored or simply unknown. This podcast/vlog/website presents full audio productions of the plays, exploratory read throughs, fragmentary and extant material, other texts not directly dramatic, all of which shaped the theatrical world that is more generally known.
We’re going to produce EVERYTHING. In full, in part, in different ways, live, in studio, in rehearsal, in production. You can sample some of our work in progress work on ALL the plays in this podcast timeline…
You help support us by pledging on our patreon account, and get a vote as to what we do next. http://www.patreon.com/beyondshakespeare
Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher or just listen here.
beyondshakespeare.org 