Episode Detail: Shakespeare; Ireland - Changing Stages
Debut: British director Richard Eyre hosts a six-hour review of the English-speaking theater in the 20th century. But he begins in the 16th, with Shakespeare. According to Eyre, “The luck of the British theater is that we had Shakespeare,” and in the first hour he traces how 20th-century actors and directors interpreted the Bard. He sums up Shakespeare's importance: “He's our theatrical DNA..” In the second hour, Eyre visits Ireland. “Without Irish playwrights,” he says, “British theater would have died.”
