Whitney White and Shakespeare
About this episode
Whitney White discusses her four-play musical cycle, All Is But Fantasy, and its exploration of Shakespeare's female characters.
Whitney White is a theatrical powerhouse. A director, writer, actor, and musician, White’s work has been seen on Broadway, Off Broadway, and at major institutions including The Public Theater, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and, most recently, the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her projects include Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, The Last Five Years, Macbeth in Stride, and By The Queen, which was featured in the Folger’s 2025 Reading Room Festival. In this episode, White discusses All Is But Fantasy, her four-play musical cycle created for the RSC, where it’s now receiving its world premiere. The high-energy, gig-theater show investigates Shakespeare’s women and ambition, focusing on Lady Macbeth, Emilia, Juliet, and Richard III. Each piece combines performance with original music, using sound and rhythm as a way into the text and as a tool for rethinking these characters whose inner lives are often cut short or overlooked. White reflects on why Shakespeare’s women so often meet tragic ends, how those stories continue to feel familiar, and what it means to keep staging them now. She considers the ways that music, performance, and adaptation can help us better understand Shakespeare…
Topics covered
- theater
- Shakespeare
- women in Shakespeare
- musical theater
- adaptation
Keywords
- Lady Macbeth
- Emilia
- Juliet
- Richard III
- gig-theater
More episodes of Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
- The Translator's Art and Shakespeare, with Daniel Hahn
- The Improvised Shakespeare Company
- Adjoa Andoh on Shakespeare
- Thinking Through Shakespeare, with David Womersley
- The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery
- Shakespeare and Mathematics
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