“Shake the Sphere with Sid”
Sidney Homan is the author of thirteen books and editor of eight collections of essays on Shakespeare and the modern playwrights, and an actor and director in commercial and university theatres. He has been named the University of Florida’sTeacher/Scholar of the Year. His prize-winning Beckett’s Theatres: Interpretations for Performance emerged from his tour of Florida prisons with a production of Waiting for Godot. In A Fish in the Moonlight, he recounts stories of his youth in South Philly and his experience telling them to children on the hospital’s Pediatric Bone Marrow Unit. Bloomsbury/Methuen has published Comedy Acting for Theatre: The Art and Craft of Performing in Comedies, which he wrote with the New York director Brian Rhinehart. And for Routledge Press his most recent book is Pivotal Lines in Shakespeare and Others: Finding the Heart of the Play. He has also written the libretto for the opera The Golem of Prague, with a score by the composer Paul Richards.
About the Podcast:
Drawing on friends, people I’ve worked with in the theatre and at the university—writers, actors, composers, scholars, teachers—I explore the two halves (hence the word “Sphere" in the podcast title) of their lives. One sphere is: what they do in life and how they came to do it. I get at this by asking them to tell me both a favorite line and then a work that has stayed with them, influenced them all their lives. And the other sphere is: how their work influences the way they see others, how it defines them, shapes them. The podcast series was inspired by a precious undergraduate of mine who said simply, “You are what you do."
Sid talks with Lawrence Quill, one of the most brilliant and inventive of thinkers, whose inquiries run from the use of nostalgia in politics to governments' recourse to secrecy. Professor of Political Science at San Jose State University, Lawrence has been a Technology and Democracy Fellow at the Center for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and the Humanities at Cambridge University. He is also the Co-Director of the (wonderfully named) Loneliness Project at his university. ...
15 Jul 2025
EP9 - Susan Cerasano
Sid talks with Susan Cerasano, the Edgar W. B. Fairchild Professor of Literature at Colgate University. Now, when Susan “talks” about Shakespeare, or Marlowe--for that matter, the words flow from her like some joyous, fast-moving stream, eager to flood its banks. Wonderfully perceptive parallels are made, insights into the characters rooted in Susan's love of the script. Little wonder that she is so popular with students and her colleagues. This is only half the story. Susan is no less intere...
4 Jul 2025
EP2 - Mike Hill
Sid talks with Michael Hill about how his work in eighteenth century studies has expanded to his concerns with environmental humanities, the interaction of war and culture, and, most recently, the link between war and climate change. A professor of English at SUNY/Albany, Mike shows how one’s “field” can be the door to wider, emergent contemporary topics, as in his Masses, Class, and the Public Sphere (2000) and After Whiteness: Unmaking an American Majority (2004).
4 Jul 2025
EP3 - Donna Soto-Morettini
Sid talks with Donna Soto-Morettini, who has done just about everything in the business. Rock and Roll singer in California. Director of Drama for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal Central School in London. She is highly sought after as an acting coach and casting director (for Andrew Lloyd Webber, among others). Her books on acting, auditioning, getting into character, and singing are justly popular. Donna confesses that her favorite role was as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd.
4 Jul 2025
EP5 - Henry Sussman
Sid talks with Henry Sussman, one of the country’s most eminent scholars and teachers, who has used his study of literature and culture to put in context his political commentary, as in The Great Dismissal: Memoir of the Cultural Demolition Derby, 2015-2021. October 2023 saw the premier of Henry’s play Soiree at Walter Benjamin’s at the New York Theatre Festival. And if this weren’t enough, his debut collection of poetry “Polaroids of Turbulence” was published by BlazeVOX Books in 2024. One h...
4 Jul 2025
EP4 - Jerry Harp
Sid talks with Jerry Harp, a teacher much in demand at Lewis and Clark College. His four books of poetry reveal an artist of extraordinary sensitivity, and Jerry uses that sensitivity in his study For Us What Music: The Life and Poetry of Donald Justice. It was his role as the Friar in a production of Romeo and Juliet that led him to examine the complexity of that character, then write about the experience in “Uncertain Text: Student and Teacher Find Their Way Onstage in Romeo and Juliet,” wh...
4 Jul 2025
EP1 - Avra Sidiropoulou
Sid talks with Avra Sidiropoulou, a brilliant director who has staged plays all over the world. A professor at the Open University of Cyprus, she has written extensively about the contemporary theatre—indeed, theatre people have found essential her book Directions for Directors (2018). With a concern both for her actors and audience, she speaks, among many other works, in wonderful detail about her recent recasting of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in light of Stanislavski’s 1889 production for the Mo...
4 Jul 2025
EP6 - Paul Richards
Sid talks with Paul Richards, Professor of Music and Head of Composition at the University of Florida. When I speak of my colleague’s music as being “all over the place,” I mean this as the ultimate compliment. Richards has written orchestral, vocal, chamber, and theatrical works, as well as full-length operas. His music has been praised for its “strong, pure melodic gifts,” and he has had commissions from numerous organizations, orchestras, and university programs. Paul is especially interes...
4 Jul 2025
EP7 - David O’Donnell
Sid talks with David O’Donnell, now adjunct professor at Victoria University in Wellington. While his natural modesty would prevent him for acknowledging the fact, David has perhaps been the person most responsible for the recognition and growth of native New Zealand actors, playwrights, and composers. Himself a fine actor and director, he has staged some twenty productions of New Zealand plays. He was also the editor of the Playmarket New Zealand PlaySeries from 2010 to 2023, and was honored...
4 Jul 2025
EP8 - Brian Rhinehart
Sid talks with Brian Rhinehart, Professor of Theatre at the Actors Studio Drama School in New York. Old friends for years now, they have been each other’s actor and director (and had great fun doing so), in everything from improv to the plays of Sam Shepard. Brian directed the award-winning Butoh Medea on Theatre Row in Manhattan, was named “Best Director” for Einstein’s Dream at New York’s International Fringe Festival, and was awarded a Fullbright for his Dispersal: A Gentrification Story.&...
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