Sights, Sounds, and Smells of Elizabethan Theater

Sixteenth-century theater companies used a variety of physical and sensual staging effects in their productions to create a full-body experience for playgoers: fireworks hissing and shooting across the stage, fake blood, fake body parts, the smell of blood and death, and more. Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern are the editors of a 2013 collection of essays, Shakespeare’s Theatre and the Effects of Performance, written by themselves and nine other theater historians. Tiffany Stern is a Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama with the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon. Farah Karim-Cooper is Head of Higher Education and Research at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Tiffany and Farah are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published December 13, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, Awake Your Senses, was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. We had production help from Cathy Devlin and Dom Boucher at the Sound Company in London and Paul Luke and Andrew Feliciano at at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.