An Excellent Dumb Discourse: Shakespeare in Silence
4 Extra Debut. How did the Bard work on silent film minus powerful language? Judith Buchanan celebrates Shakespeare in early cinema. From 2016.
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:
* Actor, Samuel West
* Actress, Flora Spencer-Longhurst - played a silenced Lavinia in the Globe’s Titus Andronicus
* Christopher Wheeldon - Choreographer, associate of the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, London
* Paata Tsikurishvili - Director of Synetic Theatre in America
Together they explore Shakespeare in picture and movement.
A Rockethouse production for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4, first broadcast in April 2016.
Last on
Broadcasts
Sun 17 Apr 2016 13:30Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4- Mon 28 Oct 2024 10:30Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 Extra
- Mon 28 Oct 2024 16:30Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 Extra
- Tue 29 Oct 2024 00:30Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 Extra