How we staged Shakespeare
Actors, directors, designers, dancers, musicians and other creatives offer their own guides to understanding Shakespeare's plays
Patrick Stewart on Shylock: 'I should have been arrested for overacting'
Our How We Staged Shakespeare series ends with the celebrated actor explaining why he keeps coming back to the much-misunderstood role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice
Death, pain, humiliation and hilarity … Tim Crouch on the joy of Twelfth Night
The actor and theatre-maker had such a good time playing Malvolio in Shakespeare’s comedy that he wrote a whole show for him
'It's like a Clark Gable movie': Fiona Buffini on The Two Gentlemen of Verona
One of the hardest things about doing Shakespeare? Making sure the comedy is actually funny, says the director who transported his early play to the jazz age
'Tom Hiddleston sang a boyband number': Nick Ormerod on Cymbeline
Designer Nick Ormerod on how he brought Shakespeare’s ancient Britons into the 20th century for Cheek by Jowl’s production of Cymbeline
Derek Jacobi: 'Much Ado saved me from stage fright'
After touring Hamlet in 1980, the actor succumbed to the ‘worm of doubt’ – but a job playing Shakespeare’s quick-witted hero forced him to face his anxiety
Rupert Goold: 'It was pretty intense, living with my Lady Macbeth'
Goold’s wife Kate Fleetwood was cast alongside Patrick Stewart in his Soviet-styled 2007 production – the ‘luckiest’ show the director has worked on
Willard White on playing Othello: 'I broke down – I considered walking away'
The opera singer played the jealous general opposite Imogen Stubbs and Ian McKellen in a 1989 RSC version. He remembers the play as a crushing experience
Timothy West on Richard II: 'You can't take your eyes off him'
When he played Bolingbroke to Ian McKellen’s Richard in a 1960s Prospect production, West discovered a play divided between his character and the king – and learned that McKellen is a white-wine actor while he’s definitely red
Chuk Iwuji on playing Henry VI: 'There's nothing wimpy about him'
From trying out the trapeze to finding his own moral compass, the actor on the challenges of playing Shakespeare’s flawed king in the RSC’s history cycle
Shakespeare's 'Brexit play': Josie Rourke on King John
The Donmar Warehouse chief on directing a darkly witty drama about our destiny as a nation – and why it reminds her of The West Wing
Conductor Daniele Gatti on Falstaff: 'It's as if Verdi was saying farewell'
Verdi was 80 when he finished turning Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor into a comic opera. Gatti’s 2012 production aimed to draw out its tenderness
Thomas Ostermeier: Richard III? He's a rock star, a standup comedian
In the German director’s Schaubühne production, there’s a drum kit on stage, the princes are puppets and the battle scene features Richard alone in his pants
Bob Crowley: 'I’m not sure you can set Shakespeare anywhere, or at any time'
Lesley Manville as a post-punk shepherdess, Juliet Stevenson in pinstripes and a forest of silk … the designer behind the RSC’s As You Like It in 1985 explains his approach to the plays
Cush Jumbo: 'There was no makeup, no boys to kiss – all we had was the text and we rocked it'
The Good Wife’s star recalls how appearing in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Julius Caesar gave her the confidence to write her own play
Peter Brook: Timon of Athens really did bring down the house
When the director re-opened a dilapidated Parisian theatre with an international Shakespeare production, the applause shook the building
The cut and thrust of Shakespeare: a fight director's view
Henry V is a play about war yet we only see two conflicts – and the way the characters do combat tells us plenty about them, says fight director Terry King
Richard Eyre on the Hollow Crown's Henry IV: from the pub to the battlefield
For the BBC series, Eyre took Shakespeare’s histories out into the country they portrayed, shooting on location to give a broad vision of England
'The steps say the words': Antoinette Sibley on dancing Shakespeare's Dream
‘The ballet really gets over the difference between the supernatural people and the human characters,’ says Antoinette Sibley, who in 1964 danced Titania opposite Anthony Dowell’s Oberon in The Dream by Frederick Ashton
Voodoo child: Jonathan Pryce on channelling his father's death for Hamlet
Jonathan Pryce had never seen Hamlet on stage – and thought Olivier’s film version was mannered. But the violent death of his father prompted him to take on the Dane, and radically rethink the ghost as an Exorcist-style possession
Speak, master: a text coach on Shakespeare's way with words
Text adviser Giles Block on how the Bard made everything from pauses to awkward phrases sound as natural and intensely theatrical as possible
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