Sharing Cymbeline, a community-sourced virtual project run by Shakespeare Link UK, has entered the action-packed, final half of Cymbeline. Submissions remain open for community performances of excerpts from the play's final act. In the videos below, directors of the Willow Globe Susanna Best and Philip Bowen (click here for our recent interview with Susanna and Philip!) recount the play's spectacular climax and denouement, giving potential community actors context for their performances.

Continuing our series of interviews with our collaborating directors, we turn to Susanna Best and Philip Bowen of the Willow Globe theatre, located in the Welsh countryside. Read on to find out how the Shakespeare Link UK company of this living, tree-grown theatre are adapting their theatre practice to the ongoing pandemic, along with some hints about their upcoming Cymbeline production!

In the second of our interviews with Cymbeline in the Anthropocene's collaborating directors, we spoke to Dunay Yespaev Amandykovich of the Stanislavsky Theatre in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Read below for a glimpse of how theatres in Kazakhstan are adapting to Covid-19 conditions, and keep an eye on this blog for more directors' interviews soon!

The Willow Globe team's Sharing Cymbeline project recently presented their community's latest renditions from act III of Cymbeline. Act III is rife with deception, revenge schemes, secret identities, unwitting family reunions, and a classically cross-dressed heroine, with Innogen disguised as Fidele to escape a murder plot.

After a brief summer break in August, the Cymbeline in the Anthropocene blog is back this month! This week, we are sharing an interview with our Willow Globe team member Evelyn O'Malley, conducted by actor Jamie Wilkes for Shakespeare Link UK. 

At the first ever Cymbeline in the Anthropocene meeting in January, our collaborators gathered in Santa Barbara, California, to exchange ideas. After the first day of introductions, directors and actors took to the stage to experiment with sections of Cymbeline in person. One result was a staging by actors of the local Lit Moon Theatre Company of the strangely beautiful burial of Fidele/Innogen during a thunderstorm, which merged ideas about ecological grief into the elegiac dialogue. Read Shakespeare in Yosemite co-director Katherine Steele Brokaw's thoughts on this scene below, and watch the video for a glimpse at what an ecodramaturgical Cymbeline might look like.

In the coming months, Cymbeline in the Anthropocene will be interviewing our collaborating directors to check on how their companies are adapting through the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Here is our first interview in the series, with Rob Conkie, who is based at La Trobe University in Melbourne Australia. Keep an eye on the blog for more interviews soon!

The ongoing shutdown of most theatres across the globe has not stopped theatre artists from creating innovative ways to engage with Shakespeare. Evelyn O'Malley, one of our collaborators through the Willow Globe theatre in the UK, is also a lecturer at the University of Exeter. When she and her students found themselves separated by pandemic measures, they channelled their discussion of Cymbeline into a visually and intellectually gorgeous collaborative zine. Read below for Evelyn's description of the project, and click the image below to download the Cymbelzine! 

Act II of the Willow Globe's Sharing Cymbeline project is now live on the Shakespeare Link website! Beginning with a discussion on Act II by directors Susanna Best and Philip Bowen, the new videos include video performances of excerpts from Cymbeline by members of the community. Highlights include some familiar faces from the Act I selections, and a particularly spooky Iachimo.

From the Welsh countryside to your computer screens, our collaborators at the Willow Globe theatre are bringing more Cymbeline online. 

This coming Monday, June 15th, the Willow Globe will be hosting a Q&A session on between actor Jamie Wilkes and Welsh history expert Gavin Hooson. Click here to visit the Shakespeare Link website and register for this free event!