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This week’s podcast continues our three month-long discussion of King Lear with a slight detour and an interview with Jean Hegland, the author of the Lear-influenced and -infused novel, Still Time. Plus, a new contest!
CONTEST!!!
Thanks again, to Jean Hegland for joining us for this discussion… and for something even cooler. She has provided an autographed hardbound copy of Still Time.
And you know what that means… it’s contest time!
As I read Still Time, as is my wont, I kept thinking of what a film of this would be like, and who would play John–the professor in the book–and I could totally see Jack Nicholson… though he may be a bit too old–that and he’s pretty much retired. And her discussion of the Ian Holm King Lear got me thinking, too–and I think you know where I’m going with this (especially as I do this with every play):
“Who do you want to see tackle the role of Lear today?”
The only limitation is that the person (male or female) needs to be currently working (so no Richard Burton or even my aforementioned Jack Nicholson).
Name your Lear and back it up with your rationale. You can either tweet it to me with the hashtag #myLear4BSP — that’s the number 4 and the initials for the Bill / Shakespeare Project, or if you want to get more in-depth (i.e., longer than 140 characters) you can either put it into a comment in the thread of this podcast, OR you can email it to me at bill [at] thebillshakespeareproject.com
Be aware, though, of our deadline of Wednesday, May 25. I’ll pick the winner on that day, and ask the winner to read his or her pick and reason on the air for our end-of-month and end-of-play podcast (which will, of course, include my own Lear cast and concept). So pick your Lear, and win an autographed copy of a great book.
Podcast Credits
This podcast was recorded with the built-in microphone on an Acer Chromebook C720, using AudioRecorder from gideon.weissman (webaudiodemos.appspot.com). The interview itself was recorded over a Samsung Galaxy 3 using ACR (Another Call Recorder) software by NLL. It was then edited in Adobe Audition Creative Cloud on a Dell Inspiron 3847 computer.
The bumper music (Loop 90) and the segue music (Morning Show Segue) are courtesy of Royalty Free Music.com, which offers a comprehensive music library of production music for your various royalty free music needs including full albums, tracks and free music clips, loops, and beats available for download.
First choice would be Judi Dench, hands down.
nice choice… reason?
Patrick Stewart. It might seem too obvious to choose a well-known white male Shakespearean actor for the part. I would also eventually like to see Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Jessica Lange, Maggie Smith, and Laurence Fishburne take on the role. But Lear is a significant gap in Stewart’s impressive body of Shakespearean work (as far as I know, we only have the adaptation “King of Texas” to see what he would do with the character), and it would be wonderful to compare his interpretation with Ian McKellan’s, given their close working relationship. His Shakespeare performances are often filmed, and it would make an excellent teaching tool.