As part of Rugby's Literary Festival, Ben Crystal and Dr Varsha Panjwani together with Macready Theatre presents Getting a Taste for the Bard: In Conversation with Ben Crystal and Dr Varsha Panjwani Running Time: 90 mins, including Q&A and book signing 7 School discount available, please contact [email protected] Shakespeare on Toast author is in the hot seat as Dr Varsha Panjwani (Lecturer at NYU and Podcaster) interviews Ben Crystal on his approach to Shakespeare. Panjwani will use her insightful interview techniques, drawn from her award-winning podcast Women and Shakespeare to deep-dive into Crystals creative processes, where he illuminates what a trip to a Shakespeare play in 1600 would be like. Get ready to receive a master-class on the poetry style Shakespeare wrote in, a taste of original pronunciation and some critical discussions around The Bard for good measure! This is relevant for all ages - younger people experiencing the Bard for the first time through to older audience members who love Shakespeare and want to learn something new. Ben Crystal Ben is an actor, author, and creative producer. He is an Associate Artist with the Shakespeare North Playhouse, and a creative consultant with theatre companies around the world. For the last 15 years he has developed the quick-raise process - creating professional productions of Shakespeares plays in 2-3 days, inspired by Shakespeares actors theatrical practice, fused with modern practices. He wrote the Springboard Shakespeare series - a quartet for Arden Shakespeare / Bloomsbury (2013), and his first solo book, Shakespeare on Toast Getting a Taste for the Bard (Icon 2008) was shortlisted for the 2010 Educational Writer of the Year Award. With his father, David Crystal, he is the co-author of Shakespeares Words (Penguin 2002), The Shakespeare Miscellany (Penguin 2005), An Illustrated Dictionary of Shakespeare (OUP 2015, shortlisted for the 2016 Educational Writer of the Year Award), and Everyday Shakespeare (Chambers 2023). Ben curated the British Librarys CD of Shakespeares Original Pronunciation , and played the title role in the contemporary world premieres in OP of Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry V, and Richard II. He founded the Passion in Practice Shakespeare Ensemble and was invited with his father to explore OP in the newly finished Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe over 2014-2016. He founded theShakespeareEnsemble.com [//theShakespeareEnsemble.com], an international ensemble who make full- scale productions of Shakespeare plays in 3 days or less, exploring a fusion of Elizabethan rehearsal methods and modern physical theatre techniques. They toured Japan with three world premieres in 2019. He gave the English Council Lecture at the British Council on Speaking the bright and beautiful English of Shakespeare . His TEDx talk was called Original Practices: Shakespeare's Craft. He lives online atwww.bencrystal.com [//www.bencrystal.com]