Callum Coates on Shakespeare: video now up

To give it its full title, Mr Shakespeare, or How I Learned to Stop Loathing and Love the Bard is a talk delivered live via Zoom by Callum Coates to the New Sheridan Club on 7th July 2021—probably the last of our monthly talks to be delivered virtually before we return to physical meetings at the Wheatsheaf pub from August. Callum is an actor so it was unsurprising that he should choose Shakespeare as a topic, but I hadn't realised how closely he was involved with the project to rebuild the Globe theatre—he even has a medal for long-service to the institution, both acting there and working as a guide for tour groups. Consequently, not only is this a thorough and articulately delivered lecture but it contains information and anecdotes that you simply won't find anywhere else.

Callum covers the nature of the theatre in Shakespeare's time, the Bard's own life and career then moves forward to the discovery of the remains of the Rose theatre and then the Globe, plus Sam Wanamaker's dream to build a replica. (Apparently there were already replica Globes in many other cities in the world, and Sam thought it outrageous that there was not one the actual city—and very near to the original site—or the real Globe.) He talks about what he finds so different and inspiring about this kind of open-air theatre in the round. The main talk lasts 65 minutes, followed by edited highlights from the questions and answers that followed, including the perils of letting the audience dress up, what to do when a helicopter interrupts your soliloquy and an experiment in performing the plays in the actual spoken accent that Elizabethans would have had (with examples).

You can find the video of the talk on the Club’s YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/VRvv3XlxiqI.