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Episode 3

Michael Graham talks to Jennifer Waghorn about music in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the dynamics of composer-playwright collaboration in early modern theatre, and parallels between early modern theatre and the birth of opera. They particularly discuss the lives and work of two composers for Shakespeare's theatre company, The King's Men: John Wilson and Robert Johnson. Jennifer also describes her experiences composing and performing Shakespearian music in her own work as a musician, composer, and music director.

00:02:07: Getting into Shakespeare and music; working on the Wiggologue
00:09:13: Studying the music of early modern theatre; parallels with the birth of opera
00:17:37: 'Enter Robert Johnson': composing for The King's Men
00:27:09: John Wilson and apprentices in The King's Men
00:32:00: Music in Shakespeare (and others): love, sorrow, magic, revelry
00:42:01: Collaboration in the early modern theatre
00:48:19: Composing and performing Shakespeare today; favourite experiences
00:56:59: Where to start?

Jennifer Waghorn is a theatre history researcher and musician based in Stratford-upon-Avon. She is currently finishing her doctoral thesis at the Shakespeare Institute on the original music of Shakespeare’s theatre company and the seventeenth-century composers who worked between the theatre and the court. She has advised on music history for productions at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and The Other Place since 2018, and has worked with the Historical Dance Society on reconstructing Jacobean court masque entertainments.

Jennifer is also a theatre composer, musician and musical director; she has written music for around thirty productions (mostly Shakespeare) with various theatre companies, including the Arcola Theatre, FRED, and the Year Out Drama Company. She also performs regularly as a solo singer-songwriter, and as a violinist and singer with folk bands Greenman Rising and the Company of Players. She was named Stratford-upon-Avon Musician of the Year in 2018 (Stratford-upon-Avon Awards). She plays a variety of instruments, including violin, guitar, mandolin, accordion, piano, hurdy-gurdy and rebec, combined with loop pedal work and beatboxing.