Better than Shakespeare: Recent Episodes
Better than Shakespeare
Better than Shakespeare is a podcast dedicated to socialist theatre. Each week we discuss a different play relevant to socialist struggle in its aesthetic, historical, and theoretical context. There are also jokes. The core team is Andy Boyd and Danny Erickson, but we also have a rotating roster of stellar guests from the worlds of theatre and socialism and socialist theatre.
Andy and Danny discuss the fall of Communism in Romania through Caryl Churchill's play Mad Forest.
On this episode Danny and Andy discuss Caryl Churchill's Soft Cops, why police reform is a pro-police position, and why All Cops are Bastards includes doctors, gym teachers, your boss, and the village executioner.
Andy and Danny finish off their read of Césaire's decolonization trilogy with a discussion of Gayatri Spivak's incredible translation of A Season in the Congo! Check it out!
If you e-mail me at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com I will obviously not send you a pdf because that would be copyright infringement, buddy!
On this episode of BTS, Andy and Danny discuss Lorraine Hansberry's great play Les Blancs! It's about a mission field hospital run by well-meaning white people during an African independence struggle and how that hospital ultimately upholds the white power structure, and you may be surprised to learn the Wall Street Journal didn't like it! But we do. And we think the Wall Street Journal can go to hell.
Andy and Danny discuss racism, colonialism, and representation in the context of The Blacks by Jean Genet.
Lorraine Hansberry's essay on the play can be found here: https://www.villagevoice.com/2020/06/30/genet-mailer-the-new-paternalism/
And join us next time for a discussion of Hansberry's Les Blancs!
Andy and Danny talk about Andy's play Occupy Prescott, now playing at Jalopy Tavern in a production by Theater in Asylum!
Andy and Danny discuss the new play Randy's Dandy Coaster Castle with playwright Alexander Perez and director Toney Brown!
Tickets available for free at the link below! http://irttheater.org/3b-development-series/randys-dandy-coaster-castle/
On this episode of Better than Shakespeare, Andy and Danny take a break from reading plays and read some of Bertolt Brecht's wonderful poetry! His poetry includes the same humor, bitter critique, and utopian hope as his plays, but with a somewhat surprising lyrical tenderness. We hope you enjoy!
Andy and Danny discuss post-colonial transition in The Tragedy of King Christophe by the great playwright and poet Aimé Césaire!
E-mail Andy at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com for a scan of the play. It's not easy to find but well worth the effort!
Andy, Danny, and special guest Fainan Lakha discuss Aimé Césaire's classic play A Tempest, based on a much inferior play by some English guy.
This is a rebroadcast of an episode originally published in 2019.
On this episode of Better Than Shakespeare, Danny and Andy discuss farce as revolutionary propaganda through the play We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! by Italian playwright Dario Fo! Plus, Andy reveals who Lynn Nottage thinks should win the Nobel Prize instead of Dario Fo. For the record, Andy thinks Lynn should win it.
On this episode of Better than Shakespeare, Andy and Danny discuss the play Toussaint Louverture by CLR James.
Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist A Play by Andy Boyd Directed by Kim Kerfoot
Scene 3: Years of the Great Break
Cast: Jeff Gonzalez plays Lev Brett Radke plays Daniel Ben Schrager plays Sean
Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist A Play by Andy Boyd Directed by Kim Kerfoot
Scene 2: Literature and Revolution
Cast: Jeff Gonzalez plays Lev Freddie Fulton plays David
Hello, friends!
Please enjoy this original audio play by BTS host Andy Boyd!
Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist A Play by Andy Boyd Directed by Kim Kerfoot
Scene 1: The Stalin School of Falsification
Cast: Jeff Gonzalez plays Lev Brett Radke plays Daniel Ben Schrager plays Louis and Paul Yoni Bronstein plays Ben
On this episode of Better than Shakespeare, Andy and Danny talk about Andy's play The Trade Federation, out now from NoPassport Press!
https://www.lulu.com/de/de/shop/andy-boyd/the-trade-federation-or-lets-explore-globalization-through-the-star-wars-prequels/paperback/product-8wr68g.html
Andy and Danny discuss the anti-feudal farce The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais.
We read this translation: https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/holcroft-the-marriage-of-figaro-or-the-follies-of-a-day#preview
Here is a clip from Danny's favorite staging of the opera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAYqk7jppL4
Andy and Danny discuss Geologists by Yang Limin, which traces the history of China from the 1960s to the 1990s through a group of geologists working in oil exploration in China's far northwest.
Andy, Danny, and a special guest discuss Che Guevara by Huang Jisu, Zhang Guangtian, and Shen Lin.
Note: This is a repost of a previous episode. We recommend listening to this episode along with Geologists by Yang Limin. They provide strikingly contrasting views on the legacy of Communism in China. The script for this play can be found here:
https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/noble/
On this episode of Better Than Shakespeare, Andy and Danny discuss Romulus The Great by Friedrich Durrenmatt!
Willie Johnson reads a selection from "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land" by Aimé Cesaire.
Andy and Danny talk with Willie Johnson about his new play Hephaestus.
Read the play here! https://newplayexchange.org/plays/427722/hephaestus
Andy and Danny talk to Halen Roshan about her brilliant, heartbreaking, hilarious play A Play Titled After The Collective Noun For Female - Identifying 20 - Somethings Living In NYC In The 2010s.
Content warning: discussion of sexual assault.
Andy reads Ballad Of One Doomed By Federico Garcia Lorca, Translated By Langston Hughes.
An archival recording of John Handcox, poet laureate of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, reciting his poem "Landlord, What in the Heaven is the Matter With You."
Sam Simone and Alexander Stene read Game, by Andy Boyd, adapted from the story by Donald Barthelme.
Annelisa Leinbach reads Today by Billy Collins. She also did this wonderful painting to go with her reading!
A special announcement about the response of Better Than Shakespeare to this crisis, and a poem for dark times.
On this episode, Andy and Danny discuss Love and Intrigue: A Bourgeois Tragedy by Friedrich Schiller!
In this episode, Andy and Danny talk Medieval Theatre, revolutionary Christianity, and what Marx meant when he called peasants "sacks of potatoes."