It’s Shakespeare’s birthday! Here’s some choice Shakespeare content, a thread featuring sounds, some of my favourite Shakespeare versions, a choice hashtag and more … 1/

@hayfestival for audio of #ToniMorrisson, @Idharker (and me at my first big festival for #WeThatAreYoung, months before the book was published. @GalleyBeggars and I were still working on the edits, all through the festival. It was magical!) https://www.hayfestival.com/hayplayer 

If there's one # to follow here, it's #ShakeRace - leading international scholars on #decolonisation #earlymodern race + contemporary meaning... see also @rentravailer, @ERC_TIDE, @RenAyesha, @DrDadabhoy @KathrynVSantos @ProfFarahKC @ProfKFH @drlettycgarcia and more...

Some of my favourite 'versions' now:
Mark Haddon's 'The Porpoise' - his Pericles - a blazing world and a pain-filled one; a brilliant book
'The Boy' by Wytske Versteeg, trans. from Dutch by Sarah Welling, w/ echoes of Richard III...;

A 'King Lear' I love is Edward Bond's play 'Lear' - so dark, so totally true - read and then watch Kozinstev's 1971 masterpiece 'Korol Lear' for all the damnation you could want. Script by Pasternak, score by Shostakovitch.

Another one is the brilliant play #NothingLikeLear - Rajat Kapoor, Atul Kumar, Vinay Pathak @pathakvinay bring Lear's foolery and absurdity to the front with profound impact. Catch it live wherever you can ...

Two screen #Hamlets now: Asta Nielsen in the 1920 silent film - Hamlet was born a girl! Brought up as a boy! Genius.

My next #Hamlet is my favourite, Vishal Bhardwaj's #Haider - set in 1990s Kashmir. Here he is @JaipurLitFest talking about it, and his own father, who died suddenly when he was young -

I have mixed feelings for Kenneth Brannagh's #LovesLaboursLost starring Alicia Silverstone - but I do love this play as a feminist holiday romance; so this one sneaks in...

Tonight there's this: @ProfJSanders @UniofNewcastle explores the plays of Shakespeare & his contemporaries, looking at the parallels between Shakespearean times and #lockdown2020: https://bit.ly/3cCCini 

These are just a few of mine... and I know got so many more, mainstream and less known - would love to know about yours (looking at you too, @eoin_price, @newaudiencesold, @DrRRJAshby @DrMirandaFay ...)

Going to end with this one though - #ToniMorisson and @rokiatraore's elegiac, beautiful 'Desdemona'. Enjoy! https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008MMBQUQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1