Mat Osman's The Ghost Theatre Imagines the Lives of Elizabethan London's Child Actors

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mat Osman's new novel, The Ghost Theatre, takes us flying over the rooftops of Elizabethan London and down into the gritty lives of its child actors. A historical novel set in a vibrant and sensuously reimagined Elizabethan London, the book's main character is Shay, the daughter of a clairvoyant who lives among a community who worship birds. When Shay meets a charming young actor named Nonesuch, she is drawn into the world of the children’s theater—that is, a theater whose actors and crew are all made up of young people, performing for an audience made of primarily of adults. Shay falls in love with performance and joins an immersive guerrilla theater troupe that gets tangled up in a violent political power struggle. Osman is more famous as the bass player in the British rock band Suede. To get the texture of Elizabethan life right in The Ghost Theatre, Osman researched as much as he could at the margins of history. Osman tells Barbara Bogaev about how he explored his young actors' lives, invented an early modern religious sect, and how his long career as a rock musician helped him write the novel.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	On today's episode, a novel takes us flying over the rooftops of Elizabeth in London
0:05.1	and down into the gritty lives of its child actors.
0:25.6	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger director.
0:28.6	The Ghost Theatre is a historical novel set in a vibrant and sensuously reimagined Elizabethan London.
0:36.6	Its main character is Shea, the daughter of a clairvoyant who
0:40.0	lives among a community who worship birds. When Shea meets a charming young actor named
0:45.7	Nuns Such, she gets drawn into the world of the children's theater, that is, a theater whose
0:51.0	actors and crew are all made up of young people, while the audience is mostly adults.
0:57.0	Shea falls in love with performance
0:59.0	and joins an immersive guerrilla theater troupe
1:02.0	that gets tangled up in a violent political power struggle.
1:06.0	The author of the Ghost Theater is Matt Osman.
1:09.0	Osman is more famous as the bass player in the British rock band, Swade.
1:14.6	To get the texture of Elizabethan Life right in the Ghost Theatre,
1:18.6	Osman researched as much as he could at the margins of history.
1:22.6	But the resulting novel goes far beyond period mimicry.
1:26.6	Osman has built a fantastical alternative history
1:29.6	England in which bird worshippers are persecuted and Queen Elizabeth musters a shadow army
1:35.3	to put down an internal revolt. The result is a beautifully evocative novel that's also a
1:41.1	page turner worthy of the beach. Here's Matt Osmond in conversation with Barbara
1:46.7	Bogueave.
1:53.1	So much of the stories about performance, and I know you wrote this novel while you were on
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Folger Shakespeare Library, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Folger Shakespeare Library and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.