Meet your hosts

• James Shapiro

  Professor of Shakespeare, Columbia University

  James has taught Shakespeare at Columbia University for the past four decades. He is the author of a number of prizewinning books, including Shakespeare and the Jews, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, Contested Will, 1606: The Year of Lear, Shakespeare in a Divided America, and the forthcoming Othello: An American Tragedy. He has been awarded Guggenheim, Cullman Center, and NEH fellowships, and his reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the New York Review of Books. He has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, served on the boards of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Folger Shakespeare Library, and since 2012 has advised productions as a Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at New York’s Public Theater.

• John Douglas Thompson

  Actor

  John is a Tony-nominated actor who has been hailed by The New York Times “as one of the most compelling classical stage actors of his generation.” He received a Tony nomination for his performance in August Wilson’s Jitney. Other theater credits include King Lear, the revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, A Time To Kill, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Julius Caesar. His work in television includes The Gilded Age, Mare Of Easttown, For Life, and The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks. Film credits include Spike Lee’s Highest To Lowest, Till, 21 Bridges, 355, Let Them All Talk, Wolves, The Bourne Legacy, Glass Chin, Midway, and Malcolm X. Additional work includes Othello (Obie Award, Lucille Lortel Award), The Father, A Doll’s House, Man In The Ring (Elliot Norton Award), The Iceman Cometh (Obie and Drama Desk Awards), Tamburlaine (Obie and Drama Desk Awards), and Satchmo At The Waldorf (Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award, and the NAACP Theatre Awards).