Dr. Freda Scott Giles Featured on "Shakespeare Unlimited" Podcast

Professor Emerita Dr. Freda Scott Giles was recently featured on the Folger Shakespeare Library's podcast "Shakespeare Unlimited" discussing how the Bard ties into the Harlem Renaissance. Visit the Folger Shakespeare Library's website to listen to the episode (161) or view a transcript of Dr. Giles fascinating conversation with Folger's director Michael Witmore. 

From their website:

When you think about the Harlem Renaissance, theater might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But, says Dr. Freda Scott Giles, theater played a significant role in the blossoming of Black American arts and culture of the 1920s and '30s. Of course, because there’s little in the English-language theater untouched by Shakespeare, he was present in the Harlem Renaissance too. Banner Shakespeare productions included Orson Welles’s hit “Voodoo” Macbeth, produced by the Federal Theater Project, and the Midsummer-inspired Swingin’ the Dream, which was a Broadway flop despite the talents of musician Louis Armstrong and comedian Moms Mabley.

We talk to Dr. Giles, Associate Professor Emerita of Theatre and Film Studies and African American Studies at the University of Georgia, about how the artists and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance regarded the Bard. Plus, we visit the African Company of the 1820s and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s to learn about more than a century of Black responses to Shakespeare. Dr. Giles is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.