Shakespeare on Toast

For 23 hours and 59 minutes, Shakespeare on Toast is Amazon.co.uk’s Daily Kindle Deal:

If you thought Shakespeare was elitist and difficult to read, Ben Crystal will show you a new side, in his delightful, witty romp through the bard’s life and works. An actor at Shakespeare’s Globe, Crystal offers the reader a friendly masterclass with this entertaining introduction to Shakespeare’s most brilliant plays.

Get your slice o Toast on Kindle for £0.99 (81% off) until 23:59 on 24/1…

THRILLED to announce that Shakespeare on Toast will be available in all good bookshops – and as an eBook – in the United States from October 16th, 2012, published by Icon Books.

In celebration, I’m joining forces with The Shakespeare Forum and will be giving a public talk at 8pm, Monday 12th November at the über cool and über central-Manhattan Hartley House, 413 West 46th St (b/w 9th & 10th Ave), NY 10036.

Shakespeare on Toast will be available at a discounted price, there’ll be wine, there’ll be cheese, there’ll be laughter, there’ll be tears…

Actor and author Ben Crystal makes sense of Shakespeare by putting him back into context.

First exploring what a trip to a Shakespearean Theatre in 1600 would be like…

…an incredibly quick master-class on the poetry style Shakespeare wrote in that you’ll be talking about for days…

…and a fascinating look at Original Pronunciation - the accent Shakespeare and his actors would have spoken in – and how it can shake loose a piece of Shakespeare…

This evening is for anyone from 8-80: for apprentice bard-o-holics experiencing the Bard for the first time, for the Will-haters, through to audience members who love Shakespeare and want to learn something new…

 

Head to The Shakespeare Forum or message their twitter feed for more.

To request a review copy of Shakespeare on Toast or discuss interview or features, please contact

Henry Lord, Publicity Manager at Icon Books

THRILLED to announce that Shakespeare on Toast will be available in all good bookshops – and as an eBook – in the United States from October 16th, 2012, published by Icon Books.

In celebration, I’m joining forces with The Shakespeare Forum and will be giving a talk open to the public, on the evening of Monday 12th November (venue in Manhattan TBC).

Further details of NYC-happenings will be posted shortly.

To request a review copy or discuss interview or features, please contact

Henry Lord, Publicity Manager at Icon Books

Apologies for the lack of posting to this site in recent months…

Unless you follow me on Twitter you may not know I was playing Demetrius in Iris Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream this last July, in the gardens of St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, London.

Nor that I curated a 70 minute CD of well-known – and not so well-known sonnets, speeches and scenes of Shakespeare for the British Library, the first of its kind spoken by professional actors, and out March 2012.

I’m about to adapt Venus and Adonis for Roughhouse Theatre & Bath Theatre Royal… and very excitingly, will be beginning work on a new series of books I’ve been commissioned to write for Arden Shakespeare…

Nor indeed, will you know that I am about to leave for Nevada, USA, to start rehearsals to play Hamlet…

It’s going to be an Original Pronunciation production, the first for 400 years, and will open November 1st.

I’ll be keeping an account and diary of the whole process – the first of which will be up very soon – and found via my Twitter feed…

“Before you read the play, go and see it.

Before you go and see it, read Shakespeare on Toast!”

Stewart Ross, judge for the Society of Authors

Ceremony for the Educational Writer of the Year Award 2010
House of Commons, December 2010

A very special day yesterday:

After giving a talk and two workshops to the Year 10 students at Oundle School, I came back to London and headed to Shoreditch.

A team from the Museum of London has found the remains of The Theatre, the playhouse built by James Burbage, and dismantled by his actor-son Richard, Will Shakespeare & their Company, one night in 1599. The materials were used to build the Globe playhouse across the river.

The Tower Theatre Company have begun a fund-raising project to build a new theatre around the site, and protect the remains. They asked me to come and speak a sonnet there yesterday.

I performed Sonnet 116 in OP on the Groundlings Gravel – one of very few actors to have spoken Shakespeare – and the first time that accent has been heard there – in 400 years.

A breathtaking moment. I’m a very lucky fellow.

Please head to the The Theatre’s website, and support the project.

The Theatre, Shoreditch

From the series of talks I gave last week for Macmillan Poland…

Discussing the difference between performing Shakespeare in RP vs OP (Shakespeare’s accent); then performing Sonnet 116 in RP, and OP; and then reading from the opening chapter of Toast, Schwarzengger’s Hamlet…

The kind folks over at www.playshakespeare.com (who’re also responsible for the Shakespeare iPhone App) have had their annual Falstaff Awards, and Shakespeare on Toast was nominated for their Best Book or Publication category.

Up against some steely competition, including Andrew Gurr’s Shakespeare’s Opposites and AD Cousins’ The Shakespeare Encyclopedia, I’m touched and honoured Toast was up for consideration.

Full details of the other categories, including Jude Law’s Hamlet win for Best Principal Performance, can all be found here…

Apologies for the lateness in this post, but last week was somewhat frenetic.

Following on from the great gig at Peter Parker’s Rock’n'Roll Club last Monday, I had been kindly invited to give the after-dinner speech at the British Psychological Society’s 2010 Conference in the ever-beautiful Stratford-upon-Avon. A terrific evening, with much fascinating post-dinner in-depth analysis of Life, the Universe and Everything Shakespeare with some of the delegates.

Then on Friday I whisked myself over to Tolethorpe Hall – a beautiful manor near Stamford, with a wonderful open-air theatre where the Stamford Shakespeare Society perform, to speak at the Cambridge Welland Valley branch of the English Speaking Union for their annual Shakespeare Literary Lunch!

Last, but by no means least, a wonderful day in London’s Regent’s Park yesterday, running a workshop on Acting Shakespeare for a terrific bunch of young American actors, all members of the Rebel Shakespeare Company, from Salem, MA.

Phew!

The workshop as part of Akala’s HipHop Shakespeare Company Othello Retold project with BBC Blast can now be seen on the BBC iPlayer…

And my father, David Crystal, has written a blog-post about it, so touched was he by one of the sequences…