Last October I debuted a new adaptation of Ibsen and Grieg’s famed masterpiece Peer Gynt, cut to 90 minutes of music and story for four magical performances. It was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Ken-David Masur and featuring the incomparable soprano Camilla Tilling and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Photos by and […]
Peer Gynt debuts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
BOOK REVIEW in Early Theatre magazine
REVIEW Early Theatre 21.1 (2018) Bill Barclay and David Lindley (eds). Shakespeare, Music and Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Jennifer Moss Waghorn, Shakespeare Institute (University of Birmingham) The central — and persuasive — premise of Shakespeare, Music and Performance is the fluidity, flexibility, and potential significance of music as a dramatic element across all […]
King of Ghosts album launched
I have a new album out this month I’m so excited to share with everyone, KING OF GHOSTS, featuring sarod virtuoso Soumik Datta and the City of London Sinfonia. This is the fourth release from Globe Music, the label I set up and manage for Shakespeare’s Globe. Percussionist Cormac Byrne plays the talking bodhran and […]
My New Book on Shakespeare’s Music
This year after 4 years of writing, editing, research and collaboration with an incredible group of intrepid scholars, Shakespeare, Music, and Performance has been finally published by Cambridge University Press and is available for purchase here. Our book launch is Monday, May 8th at 5pm at Shakespeare’s Globe. Here’s the blurb: Music has been an essential constituent […]
Mendelssohn’s Midsummer remounted at Tanglewood
My adaptation of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream was remounted on a perfect summer Saturday night with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Tanglewood Music Shed last August, sandwiched by performances by Yo-Yo Ma and Garrick Ohlsson. With over 5,000 seats and 10,000 lawn spaces with video projection, this fabled venue was its largest audience to […]
Mali in Oak is Album of the Week
The Evening Standard as made Mali in Oak an Album of the Week with a five star review:
Conducting a New Film Score with the BFI
Play On – Shakespeare and Silent Cinema, was released a few months ago by both the British Film Institute and Shakespeare’s Globe as one of our many collaborations during the Shakespeare 400 season. For this project, I conducted and supervised a score composed by five Globe composers – Academy Award winner Stephen Warbeck (Shakespeare In […]
GLOBE MUSIC – A new record label for Shakespeare’s Globe
In 2016 I launched a new record label, Globe Music – capturing special collaborations at Shakespeare’s Globe. Bringing together some of the world’s finest musicians to commune in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, this label attempts to bottle the unique environment where music and the theatrical meet. Our first disc, Songs from Our Ancestors with Ian Bostridge and Xuefei Yang was shortlisted […]
Bill’s music performed in 197 countries with HAMLET Globe-to-Globe
From 2014 to 2016 I composed the music for Hamlet Globe-to-Globe, the historic world tour to every country on earth. It had never happened before, and it may never happen again. This was a Shakespeare’s Globe production directed by Dominic Dromgoole and Bill Buckhurst, and featuring an intrepid 12 actors and 4 stage managers who […]
What is Concert Theatre?
Antony & Cleopatra: Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra with actors from Shakespeare’s Globe at the Barbican Concert theatre is a new incarnation of an old genre. It’s actors with orchestra, occasionally projections, puppets, you name it. Appearing in various different forms over the last 10-20 years, this is one of the most exciting […]
Obama hears my tunes…
This was a rather big day. On April 23rd, 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, President Obama came to visit the Globe to congratulate the Hamlet Globe to Globe company, who had played 197 countries in the world – by far a world record. This is Phoebe Fildes playing my tunes at something hysterical […]
New concert adaptation for The Hollywood Bowl and the Barbican
Looks like this is going to be the Shakespeare in the concert hall year. Shakespeare’s Globe is pairing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Bowl and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London in a an exploration of Florent Schmitt’s explosive Antoine et Cléopâtre suites 69a and 69b. This music is hardly ever performed. I have adapted all the […]
HAMLET’s concluding NYT piece as our historic tour ends
INTERNATIONAL ARTS London’s Globe Theater Is Winding Up ‘Hamlet’ World Tour By CHRISTOPHER D. SHEAMARCH 22, 2016 The traveling Globe to Globe “Hamlet” in February in Malta. CreditGianni Cipriano for The New York Times SLIEMA, Malta — Minutes before the curtain was set to rise on a production of “Hamlet” at the Salesian Theater here, […]
Mendelssohn’s Midsummer at the Boston Symphony
In January I directed by own adaptation of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Nights Dream for four actors, two singers, women’s chorus, orchestra, and projections at Symphony Hall, Boston. Andris Nelsons conducted the luminous BSO in four performances of the adaptation that also featured Henze’s Symphony No. 8 and Weber’s Overture to Oberon – two other pieces […]
I published some books everyone
The Jon Lipsky Play Collection is here. The 8 best plays by Boston-area stalwart Jon Lipsky are published by Smith & Kraus, co-edited with Jon’s son, Jonah. We’re terribly proud of these. Volume 1 includes Living in Exile, Jon’s masterpiece. Volume 2 features his dreaming and devised works, and includes Call of the Wild. I introduce both […]
Shakespeare the stoner?
Pipes (plural) with traces of cannabis have been found in Shakespeare’s yard – dated conceivably to the period. That’s about all there is ultimately to conclude in terms of hard facts to this article, but there is a collection of enticements to consider. This broke via Times magazine a month or so back but it seems […]
New earliest portrait of Shakespeare identified?
I want to see the information they’re using to decode that cipher. Doesn’t this all hang on how reliable the cryptography is? See the story in Time Magazine here.
American Theatre magazine discovers Shakespeare Aloud
Big news and great exposure for Shakespeare Aloud and hopefully sympathetic renegades everywhere…. By Jeremy D. Goodwin “Have Verse, Will Travel” Published in American Theatre, March 2013 Barclay reads from “Twelfth Night” off the coast of Key West. Photo: Casey Unterman Bill Barclay isn’t shy about performing Shakespeare. But his unsuspecting audience looked a […]
Your Brain on Grants
Fox Actor Journal: Bill Barclay (Posted in TCG Circle, the blog of Theater Communications Group) In the world of arts grants, there seem to me to be three different kinds. There are the specific project-oriented ones, the ones that reward great ideas of a finite nature. Yes you can devise this play and bring it […]
Henry V Act I, Scene 2 at the 2012 London Olympic Games!!
Well! We had to read during the Olympics! We just saw the Brazilian women’s beach volleyball team shellack the Netherlands on a beautiful day here in London, and my dear friend Caleb Mayo and I took the high ground here in the stadium to film this famous and hysterically intricate scene, I;2 of Henry V. […]
REVIEW: Armenian King John at the Globe
King John, or My Big Fat Armenian Wedding. So far in this feast of a festival, the most satisfying thing to witness is one of these foreign companies use their own culture, music, dress, and point of view to make a Shakespeare play completely their own, then illuminate this unique prism in performance to reveal […]
PUCK ON A WATERSLIDE
Is this fun or what? This is just the footage of the first Shakespeare recitation on video ever taken while gliding down a thermal spring fed Swiss water slide (at :36). Sorry about the audio. Waterproof camera and all. At least let’s hope it’s a first. Not sure what other crazy original idea I’ve got […]
An interesting blog post about teaching Shakespeare and mining the metrics
I caught this online and felt it was worthy of a repost. It’s from a blogspot called Ferule and Fescue, and its author, Flavia, writes to our point here at Shakespeare Aloud extremely effectively. In short, there are MANY different rhythms going on – the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare’s line, our own heartbeats and breaths, […]
Love’s Labours Lost – Act III, Scene 1 SKIING, on a BUTT LIFT and finally, AS MY OWN SKIING VIDEOGRAPHER
This is maybe the best video so far since the Occupy protest march. In this one scene, albeit it is a long scene, full of clowns and lovers and all ranges of noble to doggerel verse, I try skiing for the first time with Yorick. A dangerous proposition! Remember Yorick is ceramic… Once again my […]
Don Adriano de Armado IS SKIING. In the Swiss Alps, no less (and so is his videographer…)
I just had to post this one separately. Is it a first? Love’s Labours while skiing? Precedent! None. I think this guy was made to ski – it works perfectly! Thanks to my aunt Daniela Pellaud-St. Mary for filming so beautifully – also skiing!!!
Henry VI part 3 – Act IV, Scene 3 while drawing blood…
This was really fun, and I HIGHLY recommend this activity for those of you who tend to hate needles. Why not be struggling to make sense of some arcane scene of some arcane Shakespeare play, regaling your nurse, a ceramic skull, and a cheap camera, than be digging your nails into your hand dreading the […]
Richard III – Act II, Scene 1 in Battery Park
There’s really something about this fake reunion scene between the Woodvilles and the rest of the court that jives with this statue of the immigrants just landed from Ellis Island. I don’t know, does ‘fish out of water’ cover it? Maybe not – probably a contributing factor is the Hans-Solo-esque capturing of these desperate souls […]
Richard III – Act I, Scene 3 in Zuccotti Park
Previous occupants – Occupy Wall Street protesters. Current occupants – meandering cops, and Richard III. Let the beef begin.
Titus Andronicus Act V, Scene 3 – Carving the Christmas Roast!
Oh this is a good one. Who can resist indulging in the graphic and dripping language of the feast scene while carving a bloody roast straight out of the oven? Well it was a pleasure and I highly recommend it. If a little gross. This scene is supposed to make you squirm, and the only […]
Reading Shakespeare Aloud
My google alert for Shakespeare Aloud turned up something interesting recently. I don’t know what book this is taken from – it’s pretty generic and dry. But there are some interesting pieces of advice for those people who seek any kind of benefits to speaking the Bard aloud. In particular, achieving any sense of the […]
Othello is half comedic?
You may recall my friend Grey, featured prominently in our readings on my birthday, 11/11/11 at BOTH 11:11:11am and 11:11:11pm (we were reading the best scene of the play to boot – check it out.) He sends me now this article which I find utterly fascinating, particularly because it scratches an itch I have about […]
Mounting Comedy with actual twins
Meet Zach and Jared Greenberg, and Aidan and Dotan Horowitz as Dromios of Ephesus and Syracuse, and Antipholuses of Syracuse and Ephesus on our first day of rehearsal. This fall I have been blessed with a scenario that a Shakespeare lover could fantasize over, on and off, for one’s entire lifetime. The opportunity to […]
BEST OF OCCUPY BOSTON
This is a video I created to feature the highlights of these three scenes late in Taming of the Shrew shot in the midst of the Occupy Boston protest rally. There’s an amazing rendition here of “The quality of mercy is not strained” from Merchant of Venice, and the same guy starts off with a […]
The Questionable Authorship of Edward III
I’ve had a hard time getting to the root of the issue here. Was this Shakespeare or not Shakespeare? Did he collaborate? And how sure are we that he did? I’ll come back to this question as I march through the play, but I want to hear from the blogosphere about the issue. Who has […]
Two Gents Act 4, Scene 4 – Boston’s Financial District & The Black Rose
I am so absolutely bowled over by what happened here. So much happened in such a short space. First of all, I get to do the scene, talking to the audience about Crab my dog, with a real horse (and a very pretty one!). Not only this, but you’ll see as the video starts, this […]
Two Gents Act 2, Scene 4 – Eiffel Tower
A gorgeous day with my family here in Paris. I’m here with my mother (who’s visiting Paris for the first time), my step-father’s brother John St. Mary and his family – his wife Daniela Pellaud-St. Mary and their children Colin (my 10 year old godson) and his little sister Anais. John and Daniela’s family live […]
Two Gents Act 2, Scene 6 – inside Notre Dame!
Ok so this was the coolest moment in the whole thing so far, by far. Talk about serendipity. I’m traveling with my family and am not especially choosing great places to read – we are seeing the big sights and I am trying to do at least once scene everywhere we go along the way. […]
Festival of Independence
Announcing a new series at the Globe of music, film, theatre, and comedy put together by a few of us working over time, in cahoots with phenomenal talent and playwright Tanika Gupta, the festival curator. You can read more here and the concert I’m leading on June 21 & 22 with Soumik Datta, Talvin Singh, […]
Growing Praise for MALI IN OAK
Mali in Oak is the third release from Globe Music, the new record label I founded and manage for Shakespeare’s Globe. Featuring Nigerian kora virtuoso and cellist Tunde Jegede and the innovative and dynamic South African guitarist Derek Gripper, this is a disc of Malian griot repertoire, recorded in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse under the […]
BBC PROMS at the Globe
Last summer we invited the BBC Proms to host one of its few satellite concerts at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Jonny Cohen and his fabulous group Arcangelo came to grace us with a profoundly beautiful Restoration programme of Purcell and others that went out live on Radio 3. This video gives a good sense […]
Wonder Women Concert Series
In 2016, we took a radical departure from the Candlelit Concert series by bringing together a technicolour clutch of women from folk to electropop and featured them across both our spaces. It was a huge pleasure to work with Radio 6 DJ and admirable music entrepreneur Lauren Laverne in putting this series together. Roisin Murphy […]
Of Dreams and Dogs and Jazz – Jon Lipsky Volume 2 Review
We haven’t received too many reviews of our newly published books, The Jon Lipsky Play Collection, Volumes 1 & 2, but I wanted to highlight this extremely thoughtful one by Joey Madia of New Mystics. Enjoy! http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.co.uk/
A genuinely hard Shakespeare quiz from an unlikely place
The Leicester Square Box Office, everyone. Courtesy of my new friend James Brewster. I only got a 12 out of 15 and I’m supposed to know my #$%&. But we have two useful links here for you. The focus of the short fun quiz is on the legacy of his language in modern English – […]
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