Knight of the Burning Pestle 101

This week we bring you not one but TWO guest experts to tell us why our tepid feelings about Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle are just plain wrong, Emily Lathrop and Sawyer Kemp. Emily and Sawyer jump right in and not only deliver hot takes about Pestle, they also give us the goods in our Happy Hour and Gossip segments, and grace us with their high theatricality in A Taste of Text. Think a play within a play within a play is just too complicated to produce? Think again!

Here’s what we recommended in our Happy Hour segment:

• Dug Days on Disney+

• Bitch Magazine’s access series https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/access-issue-intro 

• Midnight Mass on Netflix

• Spencer

• Red re-record

• Gender Reveal podcast

• Final Fantasy 14

Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:

• Check out the awesome things happening at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in DC (aka Emily’s day job)

• Watch out for Sawyer’s upcoming piece in The Shakespeare Bulletin!

Atheist's Tragedy 101

You’re definitely not ready for Cyril Tourneur’s tour de force, The Atheist’s Tragedy: a tragicomedy (?) about the machinations of a dastardly atheist and his terrible family. We bring back all our beloved 101 features for this episode: Meet the Contemporary (spoiler: ol’ Cyril’s kinda boring…); A (sexy and ghoulish) Taste of Text; we summarize the play for you and play a new(ish) game, Lost Plays Roulette. No real gossip this week, not because things weren’t happening but because we weren’t paying attention, but to make up for it we do teach you the difference between a milliner and a haberdasher, so there’s that.

Here’s what we recommended in our Happy Hour segment:

• Follow these Insta accounts: @decolonizemyself and @seedingsovereignty

• Check out this fab YA novel: Like Other Girls by Britta Lundin

Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:

• SAA has an Insta account now…yeah, that’s all we got this week

Comedy of Errors 201

It’s been sooooooo long since we did a Comedy of Errors episode we nearly forgot it existed. We’re here to fix that today. Today we’re talking about early performances of the play and the great source text mystery! We also bring back another feature we forgot about for a long time: How 2 Grad School! And instead of choosing the topics for that ourselves, this week we answered the questions of a fan and prospective grad student, Austin. (Good luck, Austin! We’re rooting for you!) Then we gossip a little bit and GTFO. Happy Halloween!

Here’s what we recommended in our Happy Hour segment:

• Happy end-of-October birthdays to Jess and Aubrey!

• Read these plays: WHITE by James Ijames and We Are Proud to Present […] by Jackie Sibblies Drury

• Get your vote on at Vote.org!

Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:

• Washington Post article about ASC Fall cancellation

Arden of Faversham 201

This week we bring in guest Sheila Coursey, Assistant Professor of English at Saint Louis University who works on late medieval and early modern theater and narratives of crime, to talk to us about how she uses Arden of Faversham to engage students in conversations about contemporary true crime narratives. We rabbit hole (just a little) into which early modern married couples ever get to be alone together on stage (hint: it’s NOT the Ardens), investigate what’s with all the white girls and their tears?, and try to delineate what constitutes a “true crime” or “domestic tragedy” story. It’s not as -ahem- clean cut as you might think (see what we did there?)

Here’s what we recommended in our Happy Hour segment:

• Some Instagram accounts to follow: @notquitebeyonce and @antiracisteducationnow

• Vim’s Shakespeare lectures

• Maintenance Phase podcast

Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:

• That Amanda Knox documentary we talked about a lot

The Old Wife's Tale 101

SURPRISE! It’s been a hell of a 6-month hiatus and we have sooooooooo much to catch up on (hence the MEGA-EPISODE 2-hour special)! For our Season 5 Premiere, we gathered some brilliant friends to read George Peele’s The Old Wife’s Tale, in full, for your enjoyment. We skipped a few of the usual 101 features to allow time for the reading, but we still bring you the high points of Peele’s life and career in our Meet the Contemporary segment; we also catch you up on the early modern haps that passed by over the summer. Thank you so much to Patrick Harris, Aley O’Mara, Yasmine Hachimi, Sawyer Kemp, Merlyn Sell, Elizabeth Tavares, and Joey Gamble for lending your voices, your laughter, and your smokin’ hot takes to our first episode of the season.

Here’s what we featured in our ShakesBubble Gossip segments:

• Check out the kerfuffle Stanley Wells started on twitter…white dudes gonna white…

1. RIP Rebecca Munson. <3