This is a Classic: The Expand the Canon Theatre Podcast
Sep 30, 2026 · 40 min · 14 segments
This year, we released a book instead of a list! Still, our Research Team was hard at work. These episodes do a deeper dive on what it's like on the inside. Actors Rachel Schmeling and Desirée Baxter…
I was talking about earlier this combination of new work and classics that I had done in grad school, and when I entered the ensemble in that first two years, we mounted a production called Taste of Shakespeare, and it was three Shakespeare plays.
We did Twelfth Night, Tempest, and Midsummer, and she cut them down to 20 minutes a piece.
And the way that it was mounted, we traveled with it over, all over the city.
We did it on this like little rug, [laughs] basically with props and, you know, some unifying costumes and things like that.
It felt like a bit of devised theater in a way, in that we really worked together to develop a physical language for this piece and ways into these characters, and we all played all sorts of different characters through all three of the little plays, and- It really was like a new work, right? It was really cool.
It's like we took the classics and then made it into something that was just so fun, and you still told the whole story.
It was just a blast, and it was so fun to perform because the audience would get really into it.
And, uh, we did it first as like a kinda tour through different parks, and then mounted it again at a theater festival in Brooklyn.
And I think doing it outside in those parks was just so much fun because people would just come and gather, and we were being silly and ridiculous.
And it felt like it melded all of these things that I loved so much, and it was such a good show.
I was talking about earlier this combination of new work and classics that I had done in grad school, and when I entered the ensemble in that first two years, we mounted a production called Taste of Shakespeare, and it was three Shakespeare plays.
We did Twelfth Night, Tempest, and Midsummer, and she cut them down to 20 minutes a piece.
And the way that it was mounted, we traveled with it over, all over the city.
We did it on this like little rug, [laughs] basically with props and, you know, some unifying costumes and things like that.
It felt like a bit of devised theater in a way, in that we really worked together to develop a physical language for this piece and ways into these characters, and we all played all sorts of different characters through all three of the little plays, and- It really was like a new work, right? It was really cool.
It's like we took the classics and then made it into something that was just so fun, and you still told the whole story.
It was just a blast, and it was so fun to perform because the audience would get really into it.
And, uh, we did it first as like a kinda tour through different parks, and then mounted it again at a theater festival in Brooklyn.
And I think doing it outside in those parks was just so much fun because people would just come and gather, and we were being silly and ridiculous.
And it felt like it melded all of these things that I loved so much, and it was such a good show.
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