7. The Show Must Go Online with Rob Myles

Rob Myles, Artistic Director of The Show Must Go Online, talks to Anjna about directing 36 plays online in the year of Covid. 

Transcript

Anjna Chouhan:

Welcome to Shakespeare Alive, a podcast from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Anjna Chouhan:

Hello, and welcome to Shakespeare Alive, a podcast that hosts conversations with people who work or engage with Shakespeare from all around the world. My name's Anjna, and in this episode, I talked to Rob Myles, who is an actor, director and workshop leader who specializes in Shakespeare. In 2020, Rob created the award-winning The Show Must Go Online, which used the pandemic as an opportunity to perform all 36 of the Folio plays in relative chronological order, all via Zoom and live broadcasted to YouTube. The very first of its kind, The Show Must Go Online rose to and really conquered the challenges presented by the digital only COVID era. And it's been honored with not one but two OnComm Awards.

Anjna Chouhan:

Now, each play was performed on an international scale on an inclusive basis and was book-ended with an introduction and interval discussion with academics, directors and actors, and every show closed with a full cast Q and A. Contributors included Simon Russell Beale, Deborah Ann Bird, Jeremy Mortimer, and Ben Crystal, amongst others. Rob has also created the Shakespeare Deck, which is a set of really handy cards designed for theatre practitioners, looking to unpack Shakespeare's works with techniques and vocabulary that might at first seem alienating or overwhelming for actors. So, first of all, congratulations on your enterprising work throughout the global pandemic, Rob, and a very warm welcome to Shakespeare Alive.

Rob Myles:

Thanks so much for inviting me. It's a delight to be here. Really looking forward to it.

Anjna Chouhan:

Why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your route to Shakespeare, Rob?

Rob Myles:

Certainly. Yeah, absolutely. My route to Shakespeare, probably like many others that grew up in the UK, it started in school where I absolutely hated it. I went to a Catholic comprehensive school in Wath upon Dearne in South Yorkshire, and there's no drama department in my school. It was all, let's read it off the page. As a result of that, I actively avoided it right up into my adult years. I was lucky enough to get into a extracurricular youth drama program that was run by the YMCA. I then went to university, and while I was there, that's when I came back to acting and decided that that was definitely what I wanted to do and no amount of proper education, quote unquote, could convince me otherwise.

Rob Myles:

This is just how my brain works, but I just started to research actors that I really respected and admired. And when I did so, very frequently those people were Shakespeare actors, your Ian McKellans, Derek Jacobis, Helen Mirrens, all those kind of people, just jumped in to just trying to find some Shakespeare to do. Ended up getting cast as Oberon in an amateur production of Midsummer Night's Dream, and found it incredibly challenging. And then there was an older actor there who'd done some stuff on the West End way back when and all that kind of thing, and just kind of whispered in my ear something dead basic. I can't even remember quite what it was now, but it was something like, iambic pentameter or verbs, or something like that. Like if you hit the verbs, that will help. And it was just like, oh, okay, cool. Right. So if you think about it not as an actor, but in a different way, then that will help you with the acting. So, oh, right. Okay. That's interesting.

Rob Myles:

And if you're one of those people, like I am, that has a curiosity and is addicted to discovery, Shakespeare is something that will always reward you for looking closer. And that's been the case now for 12 years of my professional career in order to develop what worked best for me, both as an actor and now as a director.

Anjna Chouhan:

Gosh, what an exciting story. And Rob, you talked about being addicted to discovery, and that's something I know that you're passionate about sharing because you train other actors as well, don't you, in delivering Shakespeare?

Rob Myles:

Yes, absolutely. I do workshops that I call Cracking the Shakespeare Code. I've also got a product called the Shakespeare Deck, which is a distillation of that 12 years of research work into all the different aspects of what is written into Shakespeare that you can't necessarily see unless you know how to look for it. And I think what's fascinating about the word playwright even is that it's wright, W-R-I-G-H-T, which is like a shipwright or an arkwright, is another way that they used to put it, but that wright means to wrought things, to create things with your hands. It was a craft.

Anjna Chouhan:

People have this assumption that he sat down and wrote 36 plus marvellous plays, and that was it. Whereas the process was so much more organic. There was a lot of crafting, changing, altering, learning, adopting other people's work and developing the craft as he went along. If you look at the language in something like The Two Gentlemen of Verona or the way that characters move from one emotion to another. I'm just thinking at the end of that play, when you have Valentine and he's forgiving Proteus, and it's literally eight, or somebody correct me. It's a very short number of lines where he goes from, how dare you try to rape my fiancé, to, you know what, I love you, you have her. And that's-

Rob Myles:

Yeah, it's fine.

Anjna Chouhan:

I mean, it's all fine. Forgiveness, right? But that immediate shift in emotion, you think, well, a few years down the line when you get to a slightly different, even when you think of the history plays, the shifts in emotions start to be slightly more elongated. Not that there's something wrong with the Two Gents, because I think it's calculated to some degree, but the sophistication of what's going on, starts to develop. You're right. All this is part of those building blocks that he's using. Can I just take us back to your point about this toolkit, as it were, for an actor to be able to engage more meaningfully, and I suppose to extract more meaning from the language in performance? How does that extend out to the more historical or literary elements of the text? You know, in the same way that an actor needs to know about iambic pentameter and verbs, is it important to know, for example, that Shakespeare borrowed from Holingshed or that Antony and Cleopatra is basically a rip off of Plutarch? How important is all that? Where does that fit into the narrative?

Rob Myles:

I think anything that you have that could be an additional string to your harp allows you to play more beautiful music if it's there than if it's not. And so for me, I'm always fascinated to find out more about where does this come from? I think it can also help to take Shakespeare off a pedestal because you realize that he is continuing to innovate a tradition of which he is simply the next iteration, rather than a singular genius that emerged from a chrysalis, as you say, banged out 36 genius plays, and then dropped the quill and went home to get drunk and [crosstalk 00:07:28].

Anjna Chouhan:

Quill drop.

Rob Myles:

Yeah, quill drop, exactly. Hashtag quill drop. And I think it's really helpful actually to see that as an actor. I also think it's really helpful to see it as a writer and to go, this was a point at which, and like Bob Dylan gets accused of this kind of stuff as well, of plagiarism quote unquote. And it's actually a bout. I think it goes back as far as Seneca, I think said something about anything that's beautifully phrased is mine. And it's the idea of if someone gives me a good idea and that seed is planted in my head, that's now in the soil of my mind and will grow accordingly. So Shakespeare was doing that. He was a magpie that was picking the best of what was available.

Rob Myles:

And I think that can take the pressure off for writers as well of, well, during the plague Shakespeare wrote King Lear is this COVID-19 meme that we started with back in March. And it's like, yes, he did, but he'd also written 140 odd sonnets by that point, and it also had a very specialized education that put him in a place where he was capable of doing that in the first place. He'd apprenticed, he'd stolen things, he'd collaborated with people. There's lots going on that informs it.

Anjna Chouhan:

Experience counts. Yeah.

Rob Myles:

Yeah, experience.

Anjna Chouhan:

The time and the effort and the pain, as it were, that's poured into making somebody a master craftsman.

Rob Myles:

Yeah. And I think it's something that maybe Ben Johnson has led us slightly astray because I think it was him, wasn't it, that wrote in the first Folio, there's a preface that says something about, his mind flowed through his hands with never an error between them, or something.

Anjna Chouhan:

Ne'er blotted a page, yeah.

Rob Myles:

Yeah. And I think that just means that he spent a lot of time thinking, because again, if you go back to craftsmanship, my dad was a glacier, he cut glass for a living, and his motto was, "Measure twice, cut once," because if you get it wrong, you've knackered a pane of glass basically and you've wasted that resource. And suddenly for Shakespeare, he was a theatre producer. He was a part owner in the theatre as well. So savings counted. So thinking it through, articulating it in the mind and putting pen to paper when you're ready to put it down is a skill. It's a skill to be able to redraft in the mind instead of on paper. But because these resources cost money, he's like, "I'm going to think about it, then I'm going to put it down." And what's funny about that is the outside observer wanting to mythologize someone creates a legend that is actually unhelpful for those who wish to practice the same kind of art.

Anjna Chouhan:

Absolutely. And I think as you say, it demystifies him to talk about him as a shrewd businessman. And I think we like to be fooled, don't we, by the idea of a legend, the idea of a genius, but in actual fact, as you say, there's so much hard work and effort and trial and error that goes into the creation of these things.

Rob Myles:

Exactly. In South Yorkshire, we call that graft. Far from being something that ruins Shakespeare, if you like, makes it less magical, it makes it more magical because it means that what he did is possible to do, what he did is possible to access, to take control of, to wield, I suppose, is the right word to use as an actor and a director, but it does nothing to me to diminish the magic of it. In fact, it makes it more magical.

Anjna Chouhan:

You use the phrase wielding Shakespeare, and I suppose that moves this neatly to your project, The Show Must Go Online. Can you tell us what The Show Must Go Online is?

Rob Myles:

The Show Must Go Online is a weekly series of 36 live streams of the plays of Shakespeare from the First Folio in the order that they were believed to have been written, with a couple of cheeky exceptions here and there, that are performed by a global cast of all levels of experience from all over the world, but it started off as a way for actors and creatives to stay connected and creative during COVID. But what we didn't necessarily anticipate was being the first game in town. So we were on BBC News Night and featured in the Global Press. So it was like, oh, wow, so there's not only actors that want to do this, there's also an audience that wants to see this. But then also we got some absolutely wonderful and inspirational stories of what we've come to call unintended consequences.

Rob Myles:

We've had incredible stories of people with chronic conditions that are permanently hospitalized that have been able to access theatre on the same terms as the rest of the audience. We've had autistic people who get sensory overload in traditional theatre spaces, because of the flatness of this medium, they've been able to access theatre in a much better way than they previously have been able to.

Anjna Chouhan:

Where can people go to see these videos? Where do you want to send people to find out more?

Rob Myles:

That's a great question. You can go to RobMyles.co.uk/theshowmustgoonline, and that's Myles with a Y. Alternatively, you can just go into YouTube. You can type in The Show Must Go Online, and you'll find a playlist with all of the first Folio plays in the order that they were believed to have been written.

Anjna Chouhan:

What are your ambitions with The Show Must Go Online, Rob? Where are you going next with it?

Rob Myles:

I think I'm really interested now in what else there is possible to do. I think what's been a great thing to come out of this is that digital theatre is here to stay. Most of my career has been in regional and touring theatre, and that is a place that is really struggling. And I think this could have really exciting potential for those theatres to be seen and connected with beyond the little region that they occupy. I think technologically, there's massive opportunities for innovation. We have pushed Zoom and stretched Zoom in every possible direction that we have. This brave new world that we're in is very similar to Shakespeare in that the more you seek, the more you find. I think partnerships is something that we're really looking into now because we have cast produced, directed, performed, curated 36 shows, one a week every week for eight months for no money. And while our audience have very generously established, a Patreon hardship fund so that we can redistribute that funding to all of the creatives who take part on an opt-in basis, that has not been anywhere near sustainable for the project's future.

Rob Myles:

So there are lots of avenues for further exploration, but a lot of them get into the business end, if you like. I think we've shown our pedigree for that over the shows. If you watch Two Gentlemen of Verona and then you watch The Tempest, you can see the arc that the shows have gone on, and we'd love to continue that trajectory on into the future. But it's just a matter of making sure that if we do so, we do so in a way that is sustainable for the time and energy and effort that's gone into it.

Anjna Chouhan:

Okay. Thank you, Rob. We're just going to pause for a quick break.

Paul Edmondson:

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is the charity that promotes the life, work and times of William Shakespeare in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. We look after the five houses associated with Shakespeare and his family. We make freely available an internationally important library, archive and museum collection. We lead new research and we run an award-winning education program. In light of this podcast, please consider making us a donation. You can do this by visiting shakespeare.org.uk/podcastsupport. Your support and good will really matter to us, and we hope you'll recommend our podcast to your friends.

Anjna Chouhan:

Welcome back. You're listening to Shakespeare Alive with me, Anjna Chouhan, And I'm talking to Rob Myles from The Show Must Go Online. You talked about inclusivity. It struck me that you had professional actors, amateur actors, student actors, as well, and I thought that was quite a powerful thing to do, not just because it's empowering, but because you have different levels of experience. And as we were talking earlier about it taking time, experience and craft, it struck me as quite a similar practice to those early modern theatre companies, those players, who will have learned by just watching one another and by following one another around. So your company has offered that in a very democratized egalitarian way, because it's quite literally a flat screen and everybody has equal prominence on it, equal voice. And that's not something that's necessarily replicable across other media.

Rob Myles:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, it is a unique advantage of the medium, and it's democratic for the audience as well because they get a bit of a choose your own adventure experience where it's like, I wonder how Warwick feels about what's just been said. I can go and check. Whereas if it was on a stage, Warwick might have been turned to face upstage to give the king the status. So there's definitely unique advantages to the medium. Talking about that re-evaluation of values and what would we like a future of theatre to look like, I think apprenticeship is a massive part of that, because again, looking back to those actors that first inspired me to want to do this, they all talk with great love and reverence about the rep system. Repertory theatre was where there will be a group of actors who would be permanently employed at a theatre to put on shows on the regular, and there would be older actors and newer actors interacting with each other and doing a form of apprenticeship, learning by doing. And that hasn't been available.

Rob Myles:

So we've lost that theatrical tradition, which is actually how theatre would have been done and how actors would have learned to be actors and learned to do acting for most of acting's existence. So when it came to creating this, Shakespeare is for everyone, is the sign above the door. So it was about thinking about, well, what does that mean? And it means that everyone not only should be able to see it, because of course it's out there on YouTube for free forever, but everyone should be able to do it as well. So not only did we have experienced amateur actors, but also people that had never actually even done amateur theatre. So we had academics, and not even Shakespeare academics, but just academics that were just interested in it, come and play parts in the shows. So we had speech writers that were just interested in the rhetoric of it. The project isn't funded. It was about maximizing the value of the experience for all of the participants, as well as for the audience.

Anjna Chouhan:

Maximizing the value for the participants is something that really, really shines out of all of those wonderful videos that you've made. And one of the things I found really touching was that you let the actors talk to some of the, let's say, I suppose, the bigger names, as it were, because you had a student from Bristol Old Vic. Marvellous theatre school, obviously, but she was interviewing Simon Russell Beale, And it was just such a wonderful exchange that they had because there's somebody right at the beginning of her career talking to someone who's had a hell of a career, sharing his experience and showing her that there's a long road ahead. That it's a road that will be winding, but rewarding. He was talking obviously about his work with Shakespeare, but more specifically about Timon of Athens.

Rob Myles:

First of all, full credit and shout out to Ben Crystal, who played Timon in Timon of Athens, but also curated all of our guest introductions. So, he had arranged for Simon Russell Beale to be on the show. And so Ben said, "How can we maximize the benefit of that opportunity?" So by the time it got to interviewing Simon Russell Beale, there was no better choice than a woman of color to take that role. And also, as you say, someone that is at the beginning of their career, that could have the most to learn from that experience.

Anjna Chouhan:

And you did the whole thing, didn't you? You didn't edit Timon of Athens.

Rob Myles:

Yeah, we did Timon of Athens pretty much uncut, because both Ben and I felt like it's one of those plays that people speculate around a lot and go, it's broken, it's wrong, it's bad. I don't like it. And so therefore, try and excuse it by saying, "Oh, it was a collaboration," or, "It's incomplete," or, "It's a first draft that was never performed." And both Ben and I are always like, "Nah, it's a good play. We just need to find out how it's a good play." And so we did the whole play, and honestly having now directed them all, I didn't find it particularly challenging or difficult. I didn't find it particularly unrewarding or uninteresting. I just think it is a think piece and it's just a different type of play with a different approach. Because as you said earlier on, Shakespeare the craftsman is pushing himself forward all the time. He's testing his own mettle.

And just understanding that, understanding again, the craft, the structure, the workmanship that's gone into it, the graft, allowed us to go, "Okay, I see what he's doing here. I see what the point of this is." And that to me didn't strike me as an obstacle or some kind of massive problem that needed to be solved. Just do it and let the audience figure it out.

Anjna Chouhan:

I think the language is dense in Timon. It reminds me in so many ways of Troilus and Cressida. I always think about those two plays in similar terms, but it subverts all your expectations. It doesn't do what you want it to do. It doesn't behave itself, and rightly so. It shouldn't. And the characters don't. I always think of it as the play of boredom. Everybody in Troilus is bored, but everybody in Timon is selfish and disillusioned in some way. So they're kind of similar in that respect of dealing with these terribly cantankerous characters.

Rob Myles:

Oh, you're so right. You're so right. Yeah. I think the play of boredom is wonderful. It was described to me by Jeremy Mortimer, who edits some of our scripts for us, as Vietnam. It's just this entrenched situation that's gone on forever and everyone's sick of it and would rather be doing anything else. And it's an absurd situation to find yourself in, but I think both Timon, that and Love's Labour's Lost, actually to an extent as well, even though it's a comedy, they're language plays that are there to explore philosophical themes primarily, and as you quite rightly point out, subvert expectations. So when we looked at Troilus and Cressida, we used, Alan Moore's The Watchman as our touchstone because that's about taking superheroes and taking them off a pedestal and examining the darkness and the grit and the weirdness of what it will be like to exist like that.

And I feel like that's what Shakespeare did with Troilus and Cressida, was take the Greek heroes who were the superheroes of their day, and go, these are just weird, flawed people that slightly past it, really backbiting and constantly infighting, and all that kind of stuff. And I find it funny in a way that people don't like it or don't respond to it as well, because it is a play that challenges you, rather than just providing you with an entertainment.

Anjna Chouhan:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's definitely a thinky play. I'm so pleased that you got a lot out of it. And actually, speaking of unpacking all of these plays, you talked about unintended consequences, and I'm curious about what you learned in terms of not as a director, but more as a Shakespearian. What emerged to you about the plays by doing them in this particular way?

Rob Myles:

I'd say, first of all, as a Shakespearian, as a do-er of Shakespeare in whatever form, I have been in a uniquely privileged position to work with and learn from 500 actors and creatives from all around the world. And I think the more unique lenses you can have in a room, the more prismatic the plays become and the more different perspectives, colors and textures and flavors that you can get out of a language, but also moments. The way that moments can sing differently in different ways.

Rob Myles:

We had an actor on Merchant of Venice who was of Syrian-Jewish descent and talked about our version of the play being a reclamation of a racist play, essentially. And the fact that because we had not just one, but a number of Jewish actors in the room, and also we had actors of color in the room, that together we stayed up until 1:00 AM after having rehearsed for 12 hours to crack the show together and to talk about what is the version of this that we can do that we feel we can take ownership of and we can invest our energies in and we can be proud to put out there. And that was an incredibly difficult and uncomfortable process. One of the things that I've learned is that difficultness and uncomfortableness are really good things because that means that everybody involved is growing and that the play is going to be better for that graft being put in.

I think I'm more mature now in my attitudes to the plays because before I was seeing them all in isolation, whereas now I've gotten to see the full arc of them, I suppose. And it's really interesting that you talked about Two Gentlemen of Verona, the first play in our chronology anyway, and the fact that that has forgiveness at the end of it. And then you go to the late plays, and the theme running through all of those is forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. You've got Winter's Tale, a late play, which has a statue come to life. So you've got Pygmalion, who is a craftsman, who is a sculptor, who takes a block, which you could say Two Gentlemen of Verona is, and refines it into a statue that looks lifelike. And so you see the chipping away, the honing of the craft through the trajectory of the play, which is absolutely fascinating.

Anjna Chouhan:

I think that's a wonderful thing to have experienced by doing them all, that there's so much overlap and not just the development of the craft, but the fact that there are themes, topics, types of characters that he just kept returning to, that he just kept wanting to explore. I think it's wonderful that you were able to spot that theme of redemption all the way throughout his career, because I would argue it's one of the most important themes in Shakespeare's work, the theme of forgiveness.

Rob Myles:

Yeah. No, I think you're absolutely right. I think you're absolutely right. I think holding onto that idea that everyone is redeemable, or at least has some redeeming qualities, with a possible exception maybe of Iago. I feel like Iago's the one that is like, I'm not sure if I could get him back.

Anjna Chouhan:

Could you not forgive Iago, Rob?

Rob Myles:

I'm not sure I could, to be honest. But yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Shakespeare's uniqueness, I guess, comes from his ability to radically empathize with vastly different people. He has managed to get the audience to see things from multiple different perspectives within the same piece, and that's what stops them from becoming polemics. It's what stops them from becoming, this is how you should think. And I think that is what allows us to feel like there might be some redemption for some of these really recalcitrant characters, if you like.

Anjna Chouhan:

Absolutely. I wondered what your thoughts are about the place of Shakespeare today.

Rob Myles:

It's a great question, and it's a great time for that question as well. I mean, it's tempting to be slightly glib and say, like Apple, you say there's an app for that. It's like whatever's going on in the world, there's a play for that. Like there's a play that will bring something out. And for me, I was astonished when I came to Coriolanus and found that there were protesters talking about the economic disparities between the rich and poor, and that they wanted better representation from their government officials. And then that very genuine need was manipulated by craven self-interested politicians to put themselves in power and advance their own interests. I think part of what that shows is, is that there is an urgency around these issues.

Rob Myles:

I think if you are watching a 400 year old play and they're still being challenged by the same things, whether that's racism, whether that's economic inequality, whether that's unjust rulers, whether that's interpersonal problems, tribal warfare, these are all things that must be deeply embedded into our nature for them to have persisted for that length of time and not gone away. The solace that you can take from it is that you're not alone and that the situations that you face, no matter how challenging, are not unique. The challenges that we're facing might be specific, but they're still ultimately human. And as long as it's a human challenge, Shakespeare will have something that speaks to that in some way, I think.

Anjna Chouhan:

So, as you know, we always end these interviews with the same set of questions. Is there anything in our collections that stands out to you?

Rob Myles:

I got a little bit obsessed with the collection in preparation for this.

Anjna Chouhan:

Good. This is a good thing.

Rob Myles:

I was just kind of like, there's so many things and there's like trinkets and things that I'd just love to be able to just pocket. But I think more so than that, there's two pieces in particular that stood out to me. One of which I think is probably going to be a really popular choice as this podcast continues, but it's Death and the Maiden, the painting, was just really fascinating, but it seems to have predated Shakespeare's earliest works. And so while it may seem morbid on one level, the message behind it is actually really life-affirming. And so I thought that was a delightful piece.

Rob Myles:

The other one is the swept hilt rapier from 1610. I love swords. I think all of Shakespeare's work can be represented in a sword and in sword play. What I love about the sword is that I would love to feel the weight and the balance that Shakespeare would have been practically working with. So, what are the swords that they used? Because obviously now we have things like aluminum and things like stainless steel, which just weren't around at that time. But also the width of the blades on fencing rapiers now is tiny compared to that, that would have actually been used because the swords would have had to have been seen in the backseats of the globe. So you would have been working with quite a big, heavy sword. And I think that tells you that these actors would have had to have an athletic stamina.

Rob Myles:

And so there's so much of acting and performance in Shakespeare that's bound up in stage combat and sword play, and I think being able to get my hands on something that would have actually been used in the time that Shakespeare was writing and performing would just be a big, big deal for me as a Shakespearean stage combat geek.

Anjna Chouhan:

My goodness. Well, those are both excellent choices. And for our listeners, if you want to check out the Death and the Maiden portrait and any of the weapons we have in our collection, you can go on our website, collections.shakespeare.org.uk, and search in our online catalog. If we were to ask you what you would contribute, it can be real, it can be imaginary, to our collection as to represent Shakespeare in the 21st century, what would you bequeath us?

Rob Myles:

I'd love to share a feeling of connectedness that this work has brought out in a time of crisis among people all around the world. I think if you could bottle the feeling of what this work has meant to everyone who's participated in or watched The Show Must Go Online, that's been the honor of my life to have been a small part of that. And I think it will be lovely to be able to distill that and put it on a shelf and say, "This is what you did. Bet you didn't expect that."

Rob Myles:

So the other one is a personal side project of mine that I'm no way ready to actually do. But I had an idea, and I started doing a calligraphy class at the start of this year, looking at the embellishments and the different things that you can do with calligraphy. I was like, could you actually illustrate using calligraphic devices, all of the codes and the structures that are present in Shakespeare's work? But let's just take the barge she sat in like a burnished throne, burned on the water. If all the bees were in red ink and everything else is in black, it just pops up and it helps you as just an audience that knows nothing about all the rhetoric and rhetorical devices, that could make them visible to you, the connections between these things. Would there be a way that you could create that chiasmus, that mirror sensation?

Rob Myles:

Purple the sales and so perfumed, P-S-S-P. Do you make the S and the P on the second one backwards, so you can see them facing each other? I've got this idea for an art piece in my head that I want to bring to life. I don't have the skills yet on the artistic side, but I can do the encoding, so it's just about bringing those together.

Anjna Chouhan:

Well, what a marvelous idea. And hopefully you'll make that dream come true. It's been a delight to speak with you, Rob. We wish you all the very best with The Show Must Go Online and whatever you go on to do in the future.

Anjna Chouhan:

Well, didn't Rob have some fantastic suggestions for our fantasy Shakespeare collection of the future? Now, if you could deposit something, what would it be? In our previous series, our guests suggested diaries, alternative voices and artworks celebrating Shakespeare and pride. But now it's your turn. What would you like to see in our imaginary hoard to celebrate Shakespeare in the 21st century? Please let us know by going to shakespeare.org.uk/future. And while you're there, please consider completing our short survey, so that we can make more of the content that you like.

Paul Edmonsdon:

Thank you to listening to this episode of Shakespeare Alive with Anjna. Join us next week when I'll be talking to actor and director Kelly Hunter of Flute Theatre about her work with autistic people.