NB: We've got a website! www.beyondshakespeare.org - that doesn't mean we're abandoning this blog, but it does mean that the main action is starting to shift elsewhere.

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The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast Presents...

The (Vaguely) Complete Workes of Christopher Marlowe (Abridged... by a sharp pointy thing in the eye)

Live Recording for the Beyond Shakespeare Podcast

Kit Marlowe wrote some of the most popular plays of his time (usually mid afternoon), creating mighty characters and mightier verse. Join us for a whistle stop tour of all the plays and some of his best characters - Tamberlaine, Doctor Faustus, Edward II, and many, many more. A ~~hell~~ fund raising event for the Beyond Shakespeare Podcast.

Recording live as a radio show in the atmospheric and historic location of the Farmers Club in Bury St Edmunds, it's an evening (and afternoon) of drama, comedy, satire, history and the satanic ritual*.
Go Beyond Shakespeare and enjoy some Kit.
*No creatures of darkness will be harmed during this event.

Strictly Limited Numbers - Book Now!

Bury St Edmunds - Saturday 13th April at 2.30pm & 7.30pm

Performing in the Bury St Edmunds Farmers Club Lower Lounge on Saturday 13th April 2019
Tickets: £15 - Contact 01284 750 969 or email FrontofHouse@BSEFC.co.uk - or go to their website.

Any general enquiries call 07946 652 196, or email admin@beyondshakespeare.org

Picture - from our Discover John Heywood night, 2018

Performed by the Beyond Shakespeare Enterluders - including Heydn McCabe & Rob Myson. Produced by Robert Crighton

The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast can be found online via itunes or your favourite podcast provider. Follow us on Twitter @BeyondShakes

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 Shakespeare.

Apart from a few noble exceptions these plays are often passed over, ignored or simply unknown. This podcast presents full audio productions of the plays, fragmentary and extant, that shaped the theatrical world that shaped our dramatic history.

We're going to produce EVERYTHING. In full, in part, in different ways, live, in studio, in rehearsal, in production - help support us by pledging on our patreon account, and get a vote as to what we do next. www.patreon.com/beyondshakespeare

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher or just listen here.

Friday 22 February 2019

Exploring N Town

We're beginning our Exploring sessions again - and this is the beginning of one of those long time slow burn projects that will possibly never end. We're focusing on the N Town plays - that strange and mysterious composite text made up of various East Anglian mystery plays. We're going to take our time working through the plays, recording as we go, with the long term aim of staging/recording them - that is, we're working towards producing a stage production, which we will record, rather than do separately as part of our current studio recording set up - which is what we've been doing with the Chester cycle (which is a cycle).
We're interested in exploring not just how the bits of plays might have been originally performed, but also how they work as a text for personal use - as a devotional work. How the edit works towards a new work, whilst nodding to its past. How this will come out in the end, we have no idea. But it'll be fun finding out.

Anyone can come along to these Exploring sessions - either as a reader, a performer, or just to sit and listen/comment on the text. If you're interested in coming along, do let us know so that we can plan accordingly. These sessions are recorded for the podcast so that anyone can follow up on our work.

We will be working from various editions of the text - the Early English Text Society editions - and there is a very good online Middle English Text series edition you can look at here https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/sugano-the-n-town-plays. Other versions and editions are available and maybe referred to at intervals. Part of the point of these sessions is to create our own working text - trying to make our own editorial choices as to how we create our show/recordings.

These first March sessions will focus on the first six 'plays' (Creation to Moses) - though we may get ahead or massively behind - and we may do some compare and contrast with other plays as we go along. There is no forced pace being made. It's planned that we'll return in April, though precise dates are TBA.

Exploring: The N Town Plays
Saturdays 9th, 16th, 23rd March 2019 from 10am till 12pm in the Jetty at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury.
For more information contact us at: admin@beyondshakespeare.org