Sacha Coward on queer history, museums and mermaids

The Tower of London is hosting an immersive experience that combines live performance and digital technology to explore the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to kill the King and Parliament. Audiences get to decide whose side they are on as they encounter the world the plotters inhabited.In this film, historian Tracy Borman, joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, tells us about the Gunpowder Plot experience, its place at the Tower of London and the research and creative work behind the show. Tracy offers us a history of the Tower itself, from its early purpose to 'subdue the evil inhabitants of London' for William the Conquerer, to its emergence as a tourist attraction and its later Victorian revamps. Finally, we hear about Tracy's own extensive publishing career, her 15 books ranging across fiction and non-fiction, with a focus on the cultural impact of the British monarchy.For more information on The Gunpowder Plot, and to book, go to: https://gunpowderimmersive.comFor more information on Tracy Borman, go to: http://www.tracyborman.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sacha Coward tells us about life as a queer tour guide, graveyard explorer, folklore expert, escape room designer and mermaid enthusiast - what a CV! All of these things, he tells us, are rooted in storytelling, in a conversation that ranges across 'the strange tension between life and death', Zelda and the Muppets. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Engendering the Stage are re-investigating the evidence base for early modern theatre, and using these findings to make space for an inclusive performance history that involves female-identified and gender-non-conforming performers as well as performers of colour. We discuss failed performance, the porousness of theatre, the politics of domestic performance, rope-dancing, tumblers, sword-dancing, performing masculinity, dynamic femininity, androgynous clothing, the famous ‘Jumping Judy’, cocoanut shies, forbidden students, The Roaring Girl, the Fortune playhouse, female shareholders, archival research in an age of Covid, practice-as-research, and more... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Richard O’Brien discusses his new collection, The Dolphin House, a poetic exploration of “a failed NASA research project to teach a dolphin the English language in a flooded apartment on a Caribbean Island.” He introduces us to this strange and compelling story and the people involved, and reads from the collection, while also discussing his other poetic hats, including his tenure as Poet Laureate of Birmingham (2018-20), which features the first public reading of his poem written for Warstone Lane Cemetery. We also hear about the benefits of poetic forms, the relationship between indie music and poetry, and visual and material elements of printed poetry pamphlets (by way of Broken Sleep Books and the Emma Press). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mira Assaf Kafantaris (Butler University) talks to her mentor, friend, and collaborator Jennifer Higginbotham (The Ohio State University) about the politics of racialization and the embodied threat of foreign ruling women in the early modern period. They discuss how early moderns grappled with the racialized presence of foreign queens and how they became loci of competing ideologies. Finally, Assaf Kafantaris and Higginbotham reflect on the conversation surrounding Meghan Markle’s marriage into the British royal family, which sparked transatlantic, even global, conversations about race, nation, belonging, and reproduction. For more details on our films and further resources, go to our website at https://abitlit.co Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ronan Hatfull speaks with Rebecca MacMillan and Tom Wilkinson from Impromptu Shakespeare about improvisation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The very polymathic Phoenix Andrews talks us through some of the polys that they math. We hear about the development of fan and internet cultures via Ed Balls, which Phoenix uses to work up a really rich and convincing political history of the early twenty-first century across the UK and US. Visit ABitLit.co for more conversations, and to book our brand-new courses and events. How to Make an Elizabethan Theatre starts on 14 February 2022: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-to-make-an-elizabethan-theatre-tickets-198132237857 Warning: some strong language.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this film Eric Weiskott tells us about his new book, Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650 which explores English poetry across its forms and across time periods often divided up and isolated in conventional academic discussion. The book is, Eric tells us, an attempt to 'get around the retrospective reading of form'. The book traces three metrical traditions across 300 years: alliterative (that is, lines features words starting with the same letter), tetrameter (lines of usually 8 syllables) and pentameter (lines of usually 10 syllables). This historical and cross-metrical approach allows the book to identify iambic pentameter, in its earliest years, as a specifically London-based compositional practice. Asked to define 'literature', Eric says that it recognises and responds to life, and invites us all to turn to the poem Piers Plowman as a poem about close reading practices. For more details on our films and further resources, go to our website at https://abitlit.co Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mira Assaf Kafantaris (Butler University) talks to her mentor, friend, and collaborator Jennifer Higginbotham (The Ohio State University) about the politics of racialization and the embodied threat of foreign ruling women in the early modern period. They discuss how early moderns grappled with the racialized presence of foreign queens and how they became loci of competing ideologies. Finally, Assaf Kafantaris and Higginbotham reflect on the conversation surrounding Meghan Markle’s marriage into the British royal family, which sparked transatlantic, even global, conversations about race, nation, belonging, and reproduction. For more details on our films and further resources, go to our website at https://abitlit.co Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this film Luke Kennard tells us about his new collection of prose poems, Notes on the Sonnets, which responds to Shakespeare's sonnets from the point of view of someone at a really bad party. We at A Bit Lit love a really bad party, so we were excited from this discussion! Luke tells us that Shakespeare's poetry is obsessed with avoiding wrinkles, as though written by the 'military-industrial beauty complex', and he wants his poems to be somewhere between insolent and impudent in their relation to Shakespeare's work. For more details on our films and further resources, go to our website at https://abitlit.co Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.