Guest Blog: Jimmy Walters On Podcast SHAKESPEARE IN QUARANTINE

Lockdown for me was always going to have the main threat of boredom associated with it. I had two productions put on hold (one we were even in the middle of rehearsals for), and I'm someone who gets bored very easily.

I was lying on my bed one day, thinking "How the hell am I going to survive the next four hours, let alone four months?", and I decided that I would refamiliarise myself with every Shakespeare play over the course of this lockdown. If I start with one a week, then it's a win/win. Either lockdown finishes in good time or, if it continues, then I still have plenty of these wonderful worlds to step into.

This lovely new task then got me thinking, and I wondered if other people would like to experience this as well. I'm an enormous technophobe, so whilst the world was entering the virtual arena, I had no idea how to make this a thing. I needed a partner-in-crime. So I called up Alex Evans - my friend of many years, with an equally strong love of and curiosity about the Bard's work - and she suggested that this could make an excellent podcast. We could present it like a book club for anyone who wants to either experience, or revisit, these wonderful plays.

The next thing I knew, this was a Proud Haddock venture. I had my business partner give the green light, and we found ourselves in association with producer Arsalan Sattari. The podcast is very simple. We take one play a week, invite on a guest, explore the play, and then we hopefully excite and inspire our listeners enough to go and read or watch it, where they can share thoughts and comments with each other on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Accessibility is the key here. It is so important that this feels inviting, and I always find it such a shame when Shakespeare is made to feel inaccessible and dense. These are the most remarkable stories to ever be told, and we want as many people as possible to enjoy this rich experience and to give into their imagination.

It's especially important right now. We want to make sure that anyone who has previously felt daunted by Shakespeare, who may be studying it at school or even those who feel that they know these great plays but want to revisit them; we want all of these people to find escapism in these stories and find comfort in them whilst living in probably the most challenging time they will ever face in their lives.

 

This is a time that is frightening for so many people. Great stories inspire us, they give us hope, and they allow us to imagine existing in other worlds. Everyone in almost every corner of the planet has currently hit the pause button, and there seems no better time than now to step inside Verona, Denmark, Illyria or on the fields of Agincourt.

We have already aired three episodes, with guests such as Paapa Essiedu, James Northcote, Paul Tinto and Phoebe Sparrow having kindly agreed to take part. So we want as many people as possible to hop on board the Shakespeare train with us. I do hope this pandemic ends soon, but hopefully, for the foreseeable, we can not only provide a nice distraction, but excite as many people as possible to become inspired by Shakespeare's works.

Find out more about Shakespeare In Quarantine here

 

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