麻豆约拍

It's almost impossible to imagine how Shakespeare's plays could ever work in silent films - with all that powerfully nuanced poetic language, conveying so many emotions. Yet, between 1899 and 1927, when the first commercial sound film was released, nearly 300 Shakespeare films were produced.

Judith Buchanan, director of Silents Now and Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, celebrates this phenomenon - the muted, gesturing figures, the stop-motion magic.

She is joined by the actor Samuel West - along with Flora Spencer-Longhurst (actress, on her silenced Lavinia in the Globe鈥檚 Titus Andronicus), Christopher Wheeldon (Choreographer, associate of the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden in London) and Paata Tsikurishvili (Director of Synetic Theatre in America).

Together they explore Shakespeare in picture and movement.

A Rockethouse production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4, first broadcast in April 2016.