Farah Karim-Cooper Archives - The Play Podcast

076 – Othello, by William Shakespeare

by Douglas Schatz | Feb 13, 2024 | Podcast Episodes

Ken Nwosu as Othello and Ralph Davies as Iago
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London
February 2023
Photo by Johan Persson

076 – Othello, by William Shakespeare

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This episode explores Shakespeare’s devastating exploration of race, reputation and jealousy, The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. When it was first performed during Shakespeare’s lifetime the play was a popular success, but in the centuries since it has provoked a wide range of responses as successive generations have grappled with the racial identity of the eponymous character. As we record this episode a new production of Othello at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London views the play’s treatment of race through a contemporary lens, setting the play within the London Metropolitan police force, a topical environment for racial inspection.

I am privileged to welcome as my guest someone especially qualified to help us navigate the tricky waters of Shakespeare’s play, Professor Farah Karim-Cooper, who is not only the Director of Education at Shakespeare’s Globe, and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kings College London, but she is also the author of a fascinating new book entitled The Great White Bard – Shakespeare, Race and the Future. It is a wonderful fresh take on Shakespeare that prompts us to acknowledge the white bias that has historically informed our interpretation and judgement of his work.

Shakespeare’s plays covered on The Play Podcast:
070 – King Lear
064 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
048 – Much Ado About Nothing
038 – Macbeth
036 – Hamlet
005 – The Tempest

Farah Karim-Cooper

Farah Karim-Cooper is Professor of Shakespeare Studies, King’s College London and Director of Education & Research at Shakespeare’s Globe.

She has published over 40 chapters in books, reviews and articles and is a General Editor for Arden’s Shakespeare in the Theatre series and their Critical Intersections Series. Her pubished books include: Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama (Edinburgh University Press, 2006, revised ed. 2019), The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch and the Spectacle of Dismemberment (Arden 2016), and most recently The Great White Bard – Shakespeare, Race and the Future (One World, 2023).

In 2018 Farah curated the Globe’s first Shakespeare and Race Festival. She is an executive board member for RaceB4Race, a consortium of scholars and institutions that seek racial justice in the field of pre-modern literary studies.

Recommended Play

Farah recommended Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti.

Photograph courtesy of Shakespeare’s Globe/Sarah Lee

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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.