771 Shakespeare and the Generation of Genius - The Role of Performing Arts in education (with Robin Lithgow) - RECLAIMED

Summary

Podcast Summary: The History of Literature

Episode 771: Shakespeare and the Generation of Genius – The Role of Performing Arts in Education
Host: Jacke Wilson
Guest: Robin Lithgow
Date: January 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

This reclaimed episode features an evocative conversation between host Jacke Wilson and Robin Lithgow—arts educator, former director of the Arts Education Branch for LAUSD, and a member of the renowned Lithgow theatrical family. The discussion explores the transformative role of performing arts, particularly theater, in education and cognitive development, spanning from Elizabethan England to contemporary classrooms. The interview weaves in rich anecdotes from Robin’s upbringing, her father Arthur Lithgow’s devotion to Shakespeare, and illuminating parallels between Shakespeare’s own education and the lives of modern students.

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Main Discussion Points and Insights

1. Robin Lithgow’s Background and Family Legacy

Timestamps: 29:23–39:50

• Robin recounts her upbringing under her father, Arthur Lithgow, who, after a challenging childhood and the Great Depression, became a passionate theater impresario despite family pressure to pursue a more secure “position.”
• Arthur founded the Antioch Shakespeare Festival, staging the entire Shakespearean canon—a feat so rare it drew praise from the Queen of England.
• Robin and her siblings, including her brother, actor John Lithgow, traveled with their father, growing up amid actors and performances. The immersive environment fostered a love for the classics and a deeply ingrained appreciation for theater.
• “I would sit behind my dad when he was directing. I just loved watching him direct... It was just the best, funnest thing you could do as a kid.” — Robin Lithgow (36:13)

2. Shakespeare’s Education: Erasmus, Colloquies, and the Oral Tradition

Timestamps: 39:50–45:55

• Lithgow discusses how her teaching experience in inner-city LA led her to see the cognitive and empathetic growth theater provided for her diverse students—paralleling the education Shakespeare received.
• She delves into the influence of Erasmus’s “colloquies,” Latin dialogues designed for oral performance in grammar schools. These, she argues, shaped not just Shakespeare but an entire “generation of genius” through performative, dynamic education.
• “Shakespeare was performing those colloquies when he was a kid. They weren’t translated into English. He performed in Latin.” — Robin Lithgow (45:53)

3. The Generational Impact of Performative Education

Timestamps: 45:55–55:02

• Lithgow connects Elizabethan education, heavily rooted in rhetoric, memorization, and physical performance, with the dramatic explosion of literary talent in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
• She argues that the daily engagement with performance and oratory skills in Latin grammar schools underpinned the rise of so many prolific writers beyond even Shakespeare.
• “Every little boy who went to a Latin grammar school in England... was learning rhetoric, reading colloquies, and performing every day.” — Robin Lithgow (48:10)

4. The Transformative Power of Theater in Contemporary Education

Timestamps: 04:12–05:37, 50:22–54:52, 55:03–56:14

• Lithgow describes her students—many English learners and those from underprivileged backgrounds—who were “absolutely blossoming” through theater, often outperforming in English and loving poetry and literature because of their performative experiences.
• She shares anecdotes of “gang kids” lining up for more poetry and notes how performance-based learning “profoundly increases cognition and empathy.”
• “I saw my students hugely improved... It was so clear to me that performance skills really profoundly increase cognition and empathy.” — Robin Lithgow (04:12, repeated 50:09)
• Lithgow laments current educational trends that prioritize standardized testing over performative and creative arts, describing herself as “a voice in the wilderness.”
• “I just think that the formative years... there should be no testing. It’s antithetical to love of learning, and it serves no purpose.” — Robin Lithgow (56:14)

5. Parallels Between Team Sports and Performing Arts

Timestamp: 60:54–62:11

• Wilson (the host) draws out the overlap between what parents value in team sports and what theater provides—discipline, collaboration, confidence, handling disappointment, and personal growth through repeated practice and performance.
• Lithgow adds: “Theater has the extra quality of being about story. And... our brains are wired to story, and theater is story. That’s what it is.” (61:46)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Magic of Performance:
  “I grew up loving Shakespeare, but mainly I loved the colloquial characters... Falstaff and all of the funny ones.” — Robin Lithgow (41:12)
• On the Cross-Cultural Impact of Literature:
  “I would take [my students] to a play that was all based on love letters of the Romantics... these kids, they would line up at my door... begging me to make Xerox copies... They were so into poetry.” — Robin Lithgow (04:54, 50:09)
• On Educational Vision:
  “The only purpose for school is to engender a lifelong lust for knowledge. That’s the only reason to go to school, as far as I’m concerned.” — Robin Lithgow (55:45)
• On Family and Theatrical Heritage:
  “If they needed a little body, I was always willing to volunteer. I played the younger prince in Richard III... My younger brother John... was furious that I got the part.” (36:39)
• On Arts and Cognitive Growth:
  “I remember one [teacher] saying: ‘You have no idea how much easier it is to teach math after they’ve had dance.’... It’s time-space continuum. Dance is a tremendous support to mathematics and music.” — Robin Lithgow (60:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction and context for the episode – 00:00–04:12
• Early anecdote: The transformative power of performance for inner-city students – 04:12–05:37
• Robin Lithgow’s childhood and her father’s Shakespeare festivals – 30:15–39:50
• Education of Shakespeare and the role of the Erasmus colloquies – 39:50–45:55
• Exploring rhetoric, memorization, and performative learning – 45:55–50:22
• Impact on students: empathy and cognition in the classroom – 50:22–54:52
• Teacher resistance to testing culture and advocacy for arts – 55:03–56:14, 60:05–62:11
• Bonus: Robin Lithgow’s theatrical wish & anecdotes about John Lithgow – 62:17–71:27
• Closing reflections & host’s appreciation – 71:40–74:20

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Noteworthy Stories and Warmth

• Lithgow Sibling Bonds:
  Heartwarming stories of Robin and John Lithgow supporting each other—calling before elections to study ballots, and John’s daily trips to snag a Lincoln Center ticket for his sister—underscore both familial and literary connections. (71:40)
• Anecdote on Children’s Shakespeare Production:
  Robin’s admiration for Rafe Esquith’s class, where every child memorizes and performs Shakespeare, mixing music and theater, and the emotional resonance achieved by amateur productions (65:27–66:42).

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Takeaways

• The roots of Shakespeare’s genius—and that of his remarkable contemporaries—lie in a performative, rhetoric-rich, collaborative, and story-centered education.
• Today’s educational emphasis on testing often neglects the critical cognitive and empathetic growth that comes from the arts.
• Exposure to theater and performance can be particularly transformative for students from underrepresented backgrounds.
• Advocacy for the arts in education remains an urgent, ongoing struggle.

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This episode offers both a celebration of performing arts in education and a call to sustain them for the development of future generations. It is rich with both historical perspective and personal testimony—a moving reminder that to foster genius is to let children play, speak, act, and imagine.

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Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Kraft Mac and Cheese is better than 90s hip hop. We'll remind you of your childhood without making you feel incredibly old. Kraft Mac and Cheese. Best thing ever. Hello, my friends. It's the last Thursday of the month, and that means we're reclaiming another episode that has fallen out of our archives. This one comes from 2020 and has been unavailable for the past several years. It features a wonderful guest, Robin Lithgow, who has been a champion of the arts in education in Los Angeles and the importance of theater in education. And she's also a writer herself and part of an esteemed theatrical family, including her father, who was one of the leading Shakespeare promoters in the United States, and her famous brother, John Lithgow, one of America's finest actors. We've dusted off the episode and spruced it up and we present it again to you here. 2020 was a tough time. We were in the heart of COVID The world seemed like it might end well. We're in tough times again in 2026, but we can make it through. Speaking of which, I wanted to thank all the people who donated to the History of Literature at the end of 2025. I know that's the season of giving, and I'm honored that you chose to share that gener generosity with the humble little podcast. It really helps to keep us going. Emma and I are alone now. Our kids are out of the house, and these little moments are like bright spots in our day. Also, your emails of encouragement or any other signs of support. Those five star reviews are like rays of sunshine for us. We thank you very much. And to the patreon [e-mail] Literature we thank you for each and every month that you've chosen to give. There's a low ad version of the podcast that we will send you if you're a Patreon member. And we will be giving you something else this year that's still in the works. It's taking so long, but it's almost here. We're hopefully. I think we're getting very close and I can't wait to announce it. Okay, one last thing to announce before we dive into the episode. Our History of Literature podcast tour is really coming together, folks. May 6th to May 14th. It's not too late to sign up if you act quickly. We're in the home stretch now, the very home stretch. I think March 1st is the final day that you can sign up after that they close it off because we have to make reservations and everything. This is going to be a week of us having our meals together, traveling on trains together, and best of all, walking in the footsteps of literary giants like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, J.R.R. tolkien, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, and my personal hero, Dr. Johnson. We'll visit the places where they lived and eat where they ate, and we'll hear from local experts who will tell us all about it. This is in London and Oxford in Bath. But mostly we get to hang out together and remind ourselves of what the world can be like when people are socializing in person and expressing goodwill toward their fellow human beings. Learning, being curious, not wallowing in ignorance. And the itinerary is not too jam packed. So there's going to be moments where you can do things like, we'll have a smaller group who wants to go to a bookstore. We'll do that together. Or maybe another one wants to go for a walk and check out something else. It's going to be all a great tour. So check it out at John Shors Travel, that's S H O R S with no E or history of literature. Has the itinerary linked there as well. Impulse buy it. I've never regretted spending money on three things. Books, postage, and travel. Maybe that's you. Sign up for this adventure to occur in May and we will see you there. And now, Robin Lithgow reclaimed.

[Robin Lithgow]

I saw my students hugely improved. Mostly. Mostly, you know, a lot of Hispanic and Latin and black American students who would just overnight turn into great English students. And I would just see this amazing love for literature and reading and poetry. I mean, I had kids who were, you know, gang, gang, gang kids. And I would. I once took them to a play. I would take them to a lot of plays. I took them a play that was all based on Love letters of the romantics in the 9th 19th century. You couldn't be more alien from the African American experience. From the 19th century. Romantics from England, right?

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

But these kids, they would line up at my door because I had run off copies of the poems from the play. They would line up at my door begging me to make Xerox copies of these for them. They were so into poetry. And I just thought it was a unique position for me to be a person well versed in the classics. But teaching African American and English learners and seeing it just light up their minds, it was so clear to me that performance skills really profoundly increase cognition and empathy.

[Jack Wilson]

Mmm. That's Robin Lithgow, whose life has taken her From a childhood in the theater to a role as an educator, an arts administrator, an author, and an advocate. She's here today as our guest to talk about what she's learned about Shakespeare's education, the importance of the performing arts to a child's development, and the connections she's made between the 16th century children in English grammar schools and the 20th and 21st century students in the inner city schools of Los Angeles. And we'll hear some rich anecdotes about her life as the daughter of a famous Shakespeare impresario, Arthur Lythgoe, whose love for Shakespeare led to her and her family, including her brother John Lithgow, to years of traveling around Ohio as their father staged every play in the Shakespearean canon. All that today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast, everyone. Wow. What a day. What a day this is. You are in for a treat. I want to tell you how all this began. It's a great story, and today's guest is a lot of fun. You will appreciate her energy. I think she's an amazing woman. I learned a lot from her. I knew about Erasmus and I knew about Shakespeare, of course, but I didn't know about the strong connection between the two. You will hear about that in a moment. So I think we can thank Amelia Lanier for today's episode. You may recall the episode we did. It was number three on our list of forgotten women of literature, which was our Thursday theme for September. It took us to the world of Emilia Lanier, the daughter of an Italian musician, a Venetian, in fact, who wound up in the court of the Queen of England after he died. His daughter Emilia was raised by a woman with a strong belief in education. And so Amelia received an education as good as what the boys received in those days. And she ended up becoming the first woman in England to write a major book of poetry signed by her under her name. And there are some tantalizing suggestions that Amelia Bassano Lanier was in fact the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. Agatha Christie assumed it was true. And if the Queen of Mystery has decided that a mystery is solved, well, who am I to say it's not? I'm half joking about that, but I will say I'm pretty convinced. I talk about all that in the episode. After that episode went out, I got a bunch of emails. I get a lot of emails, people. I try to keep up. Sometimes I fall behind by weeks or months. But this time I was pretty caught up and I responded quickly. The email was from a Woman who was taking me to task for a mistake, demanding to know why I said in the episode that Shakespeare didn't know Latin. So a big, heavy sigh from Jack on this. One big, heavy sigh. Because whenever I make a mistake, I feel terrible. And they're hard to correct on a podcast. It's not like a blog post that you can just correct in a few seconds by typing a few words. I have to let them live out there. Usually I can't redo live interviews. I can't easily pull down audio and insert corrections. If you talk for hundreds of hours off the top of your head, you're bound to make a few mistakes. And that's not even accounting for the guests who might make a slip of the tongue. And I usually get blamed for those mistakes, too. And that's why I'm not complaining. Comes with the territory. And that's why I hope people aren't using these episodes as primary sources. I have no editor or team of editors. You really should think of these as food for thought, inspiration for further study. But don't quote me for facts. It's too hard to speak from memory. Well, look, enough about that. That's just not what the podcast is for. So I get the email from this woman, Robin, Shakespeare didn't know Latin. Are you serious? And I think, yes, sure, Robin, my mistake. But then I think, wait, did I really say that? I might have, but wasn't I also talking about the Anti Stratfordians and their criticisms of Shakespeare, the people who claim that Shakespeare could not have been educated enough to write his plays? So I emailed back and said, I think I might have been channeling the voice of the Anti Stratfordians. My mistake, sorry. And Robin very graciously said, ah, yes, I listened again, and you're right, you were. This Robin person was starting to grow on me. And then we emailed a few more times back and forth, and she happened to mention that her father had run the Antioch Shakespeare Festival in Ohio. And suddenly everything clicked into place for me. My goodness, how had I missed it before? Robin was Robin Lithgow, or Robin Lithgow was a Lithgow Lithgow I had heard about. Her father, Arthur Lithgow, connected him with Antioch and these Shakespeare festivals because I had heard an interview with her brother, John Lithgow, the actor, where he had talked about it. Now, I hope everyone listening knows who John Lithgow is. If you're young, you might have grown up hearing him reading audiobooks, which he's done a lot of lately. My kids have listened to Those, if you're my age, a child of the 80s, he's the father, and Footloose, the minister who prevents the kids from dancing until he has a change of heart. That's John Lithgow. And Diane Wiest plays his wife. And if you re watch that movie as an older person, as a parent, you will love both of them. They're amazing in that movie. Some might know him from the sitcom Third Rock from the sun. And today, some might know him as Winston Churchill from the Netflix series the Crown. He's one of the few Americans who can act Shakespeare on a par with the Brits. And when I heard him talk about his childhood in that interview, I understood why. He grew up immersed in theater, immersed in Shakespeare, watching the plays, watching his father direct them, watching the actors act them, absorbing everything there was to absorb. And I felt this kind of energy coming through the interview. And maybe I was supplying this, too, at least in part, because I had my own Midwestern Shakespeare example to think of, which was the American Players Theater in a place called Spring Green outside of Madison, Wisconsin. It's an outdoor Shakespeare theater. You can go see plays there, rain or shine, hot or chilly. Mosquitoes or. Well, that's the only option for the mosquitoes. They're gonna be there no matter what you wear. Repellent. But it's gorgeous. It's a gorgeous theater. It's a gorgeous setting. The whole thing is simply fantastic. I wasn't immersed in it. I probably went once or twice a year from age 10 to age 18 or so. I wasn't the son of theater buffs, let alone actors or directors. My parents were humble schoolteachers, but they liked theater, and they wanted to expose my sister and me to Shakespeare, just like they wanted us to see the Grand Canyon and play in the school band and once in a while go out on the back step and look in the night sky at the stars. Things for development, ways to see the world. And those plays just floored me, the whole experience of it. I grew up surrounded by factories and farms, and there were all these things that I just didn't get. I didn't really get snowmobiles, and I didn't really get hunting. I did those things. But I wasn't really an aficionado the way that my friends were. I liked sports and I liked TV, and I liked reading. And when you're 14 or 15 and you haven't yet gone to college and you're somewhere, you don't really fit, but you don't really know why, and you think well, what kind of a life is this going to be? What am I? I'm the guy who stays home while everyone else goes deer hunting for two weeks. Is that who I am? And then I went to the play, the first one, Comedy of Errors, and I got it. I didn't understand much of the play, but I got the experience. I got what the people on the stage were doing, and I got what the people in the audience were doing there, and a whole world opened up for me. And so when I heard that John Lithgow had a childhood like that, where he saw that from an even younger age, and that magic was the magic that he had available to him thanks to his parents and their devotion to the theater, I just thought, I get it. I get John Lithgow. Now, he's from Ohio, but he's not really from Ohio. He's from Shakespeare. And he had and has a big sister, Robin. Now, I didn't know much about her, but as soon as she started emailing me about Emilia Lanier and I could see the depth of her knowledge and her enthusiasm for the subject, I did some Googling and saw that she herself has led a fascinating life. So I invited her on the show to talk about her background and her experience and her interests and her discoveries about Shakespeare and his world. You'll hear all that. I think you'll enjoy it. She talks about John in a few places. My younger brother John, which is just great. I mean, here he is, John Lithgow, for crying out loud. And we're hearing from his big sister. It's fun. I have a big sister. Big sisters are awesome. And we talk about spouses and we talk about parents, Right? When we talk about writers and artists and other successful people, that's the most common thing. We talk about the support network supplied by a wife or a husband, and how much those people do behind the scenes to make the success possible. And we talk about parents and how much they did to raise and shape and mold and encourage. But we forget about big sisters. Sometimes they're there, too. And in this case, I think you'll feel that John was a lucky guy to have this big sister. I'm sure she wouldn't take credit for his success or anything like that. She's too modest. But just to travel through life, it seems like she's been a good big sister to have. And you'll hear a couple of moments in here that I think are going to really make you like this pair of Lithgows. Well, more than a couple. So let's do this. Let's hear a few listener emails and then we'll get to our interview with Robin Lithgow. We had some audio issues at one point we got cut off, so I've had to cut the interview into two parts. So we'll hear from some listeners and then our two part interview. First email is from Blake. Subject thank you from New Orleans. Hey Jack, I just wanted to drop a quick email to tell you how important your podcast has been for me this year. 2020 has been a tough time for many Americans and I don't want to claim myself as exceptional, only to relate how crucial your podcast was for me personally. Between quarantine, losing my job, getting Covid, and trying to see any sort of future that wasn't bleak, I fell into frequent deep depression. But I started listening to your podcast daily while making skulls out of paper mache or drawing. And between creating my clumsy art and your frequently wise, often hilarious, an always warm take on various books and authors, it became far easier to see the brightness in the world. Apologies for that exceedingly long sentence. Listening to your podcast felt like sitting around with an old friend, drinking a beer and talking about the books that we loved passionately. So I'd like to thank you for keeping me company in these hard and lonely times, and I hope you do another 250 episodes. I would love to hear an episode or episodes on the writers and poets of the French decadence. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, perhaps even Heisman's fascinating writers who were fiercely devoted to literature. Although Rimbaud was exceptional in this. As in other things may be fine De Siecle February. Thanks again and be well, Blake. Well Blake, thank you for the email. It's wonderful to hear from you, although I am feeling your pain as well. 2020 is just one thing after another, isn't it? What's the Graham Green line? The start to the Third man, the novel version. One never knows when the hammer will fall. Well, now we know it falls in 2020. Over and over and over. Fantasy Ecla February is a good idea. I'm intrigued. Although I think we're going to cover Baudelaire sooner than that. Actually, I have him in mind for October. Our Thursday theme for October is going to be Edgar Allan Poe, the King of October. And there are five Thursdays and I already did a sneak preview episode of Hop Frog, which would make six episodes. That's a lot of Poe, even for Poe. So I thought I might devote one of those episodes to Poe's great 19th century champion Baudelaire. Because we've had a lot of requests for him too. We will see. But I'm glad the podcast has been good company for you. Blake in New Orleans. Keep making those skulls. Is there any better vision of New Orleans than Blake listening to the History of Literature podcast while making skulls out of paper mache? I'm so I love it. I'm so sorry to hear that you got Covid and lost your job, but I'm glad that the podcast has helped keep you afloat. These are hard and lonely times for a lot of people, for sure. Hang in there, Blake. Here's a website comment we got from Daniel I love Daniel says. I enjoyed so much the T.S. eliot podcast. That was my first experience with the History of literature. Truly wonderful. The background information was very helpful in understanding where Eliot was coming from. I would love if you would do a second podcast to further review the poem itself. It seems that you just got started. The poem is so dense that your insight would be greatly appreciated. Three exclamation marks. I first read the Wasteland a few years ago, but could not really understand such. With your insight, it became so much more meaningful. I could use some more help. Well Daniel, thank you for the comment. I hear you on this. I know we could only scratch the surface. We could have spent 10 minutes on a single line, probably add that up, we would have run out of time very quickly. I'm not sure when we'll return to the Wasteland. I'm sort of inclined to do all of T.S. eliot's other works. There are some really good ones we haven't covered at all yet, but we'll see. In the meantime, there are some annotated versions of the poem online that go line by line. I would recommend those. You see Eliot's footnotes and the explanations for those and scholarly footnotes, and it really lets you unpack the poem if you want to make a deep dive into it. It's like those translated works that are side by side on the page, which is my favorite way to read foreign poetry, by the way. Even languages I don't speak, you read the poems, hearing the music in your mind, even if you don't understand the words and then you read the translation. It's a wonderful way to do it. Good luck to you, Daniel. Glad you enjoy the podcast and I wish you all the best. And the last email or pair of emails comes from Thomas Subject your wonderful podcast. There's a subject line that'll get me to open the email people. Little tip for you emailers, subject your Wonderful Podcast Hello Jack, I'm Thomas, a nearly 16 year old from Australia. I am a fairly new listener to the History of Literature podcast and found it while preparing for my year 10 Macbeth essay. Your incredibly engaging and fascinating insight into Shakespeare's greatest tragedy gave me an even greater appreciation for the play and I would like to thank you for this. As an avid reader and lover of literature, I'd also like to thank you and the team for the effort you put into your art.

[Robin Lithgow]

Art.

[Jack Wilson]

Because that's what it is, art. The humor, the analyses, the insight, and the detail all contribute to the overarching greatness of this art. I listen to the podcast primarily while completing homework, playing video games and riding my bike. While all of them excellent, my favorites of your episodes are those about Macbeth, the Brontes, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. I especially loved the little anecdote about Tolstoy's eventual appreciation for Dostoevsky. Your podcast has certainly been the cause of dozens of books being added to my list and I'd like to thank you again for widening the scope of your listeners book choices. If I may request, I would love for an episode to be made on either Edgar Allan Poe exclusively or Wuthering Heights exclusively. My personal favorite novel. Once again, thank you for the immense effort and care you put into this fabulous podcast. Your listeners are sincerely grateful for your work. Yours, Thomas. Well Thomas, your wish is my command on Edgar Allan Poe. A whole month of him coming up for October. We'll get plenty of Poe very soon. And then before I could respond, I got a second email from Thomas, which I will share here as well. Subject Another hello Jack, I wrote you an email a month or two ago and the day after I sent it I read it over and came to the confronting realization that it was perhaps the most generic email ever written. It was so boring and I'm sorry for wasting your time. Let's hope this one's better. Your podcast has taken over my life. I simply can't get enough Three months ago, music playing through my little earbuds accompanied me wherever I went on bike rides, on public transport, whilst doing homework, and even whilst waiting for the phone to ring at the declining fish and chip shop where I work. Nowadays, this music has been replaced by the history of literature. It was on one of those bike rides through the beautiful Australian landscape when I listened to the Sonnet 18 episode. I fell in love with the sonnet. The phrasing, the wording, the meaning. I like the ings, and I began to contemplate the value of literature the written and spoken word can have such an effect on a human. Its ability to provide such significance in an individual's life captivates me constantly as I discover new texts. How is Shakespeare's Sonnet, for example, able to invoke feelings of compassion and love in me? Simply, why is literature so good? This is what your podcast is to me personally, an exploration of this question. I also thought in this moment about how at school we've been forced to try and pick a career. I've had issues with this. There are so many options. Who am I to know what to do? But Jack, you have inspired me. I want to do what you do. I want to explore literature and I want to talk about it. I want to devote my life to literature and my two other loves, history and geography. And so I want to be a high school teacher. Remember, I was having this mini epiphany on a cycle, and when I came to that realization, I slammed my brakes and looked up at my beloved blue sky. After 16 years, I had finally found my calling. The sudden stop caused the cyclist behind to nearly crash into me. Watch it. He said grumpily when he passed me, which was a bit of a slap in the face. Ha ha. But who cares? I have a direction now, Jack, and it's thanks to your podcast. Thank you. Not only this, but your podcast has been a great help to me in difficult times. As long as you make episodes, I will listen. Yours, Thomas. P.S. i won't request for an episode to be made. You have done more than enough for my family. My dad, Ron, has, as he puts it, found the light of the dark, black night. End quote. Ron sounds like a man after my own heart. The light of the dark, black night sounds to me like someone who is as steeped in the Beatles as I am. If I am catching that reference to Blackbird. Thomas, there was nothing at all wrong with your first email, but your second email was extraordinary. Picturing you on the bike ride in Australia having this epiphany. Well, you're lucky to have found literature, but literature is also lucky to have found you. I hope you enjoy today's show. You are the kind of person that Robin was looking to inspire. And maybe someday you will inspire others as well. This is a beautiful thing. You can stop and look up at the beautiful blue sky and let the others swerve around you, muttering grumpily. If you look around you, you'll see Robin stopped on her bike and Margot stopped on hers, and Mike stopped on his, and me stopped on mine. And so many others who found in literature the kind of beauty you're describing. Let the others go flying past their heads down on their way to all the getting and spending. We only get one chance at this. Once in a while it's okay to embrace the sky. Okay, here we go. A quick break and then we'll hear part one of the interview with Robin Lythgoe after this. This episode is brought to you by FX's the Beauty Official Podcast. Join host Evan Ross Katz on the official podcast for f hottest new series the Beauty, taking you behind the scenes with its amazing stars as they discuss the show's most jaw dropping moments. Featuring Evan Peters, Anthony Ramos, Jeremy Pope, Ashton Kutcher, Rebecca Hall, Bella Hadid, Meghan Trainor, Isabella Rossellini, Jessica Alexander and Ari Grayner. Search FX Is the Beauty Wherever you listen to podcasts looking to create the bath you've always dreamed of without all the hassle? The Home Depot makes it easier Shop fully styled rooms and curated collections to bring your vision to life. 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[Robin Lithgow]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Robin Lithgow]

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[Robin Lithgow]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Robin Lithgow]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Robin Lithgow]

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. Joining me now is Robin Lithgow, who was the first theater advisor and eventually the director of the Arts Education Branch of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in America. Before that, she was a teacher for 21 years, teaching every grade level from kindergarten through senior high school and ending her classroom tenure as an English and drama teacher. And before that, she had a childhood immersed in the theater as her father, Arthur Lithgow, produced the entire Shakespearean canon in the 1950s and 60s, and as she and the rest of her family, including her brother, the acclaimed actor John Lithgow, followed their father from city to city as he established Shakespeare festivals throughout Ohio. She joins us today to talk about her life in the theater, her lifelong passion for Shakespeare and his works, and the role of the performing arts in a child's education. Robin Lythgoe, welcome to the History of Literature.

[Robin Lithgow]

Thank you. I'm so pleased to be here.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, so we have so many great things to discuss here today. Why don't we start with your father, Arthur, who sounds like an incredible person. And here's what I know. He started in the Dominican Republic, landed in Ohio and became a theater impresario. How did his interest in Shakespeare begin?

[Robin Lithgow]

Well, actually, he was only in the Dominican Republic a few years, a couple of years. His father died, not of the 1918 flu, but of complications that came after. So it was pneumonia like a couple of years later. And two of his siblings died. So it was quite a. He had three remaining siblings and a mother who was incredibly industrious and smart and well read. Brilliant woman, but unrecognized. She was a nurse. She was from the first nursing school graduate year of Boston University. So back in 1905 or something, she was a nurse and she borrowed money from the Unitarian Church and bought a house to rent as a nursing home. And my. My grandma and her kids ran this nursing home. And so my dad was this kind of bookish, nerdy kid with this sad childhood, and he. He retreated into reading and he says that he just read all the works of Shakespeare, all the sonnets, all of the, you know, Rape of Lucrece and the long poems and all, and read them again and again up in the attic. And he would hide up there to avoid getting caught awol. And then when he went to college, he started acting and loved it. And there's a funny story that he told me just before he died, actually, because he was the oldest son, his mother expected him to go. He had a full scholarship again from the unitary church to go to Antioch College. And he was a superstar there. And she expected him to graduate and get a position. That's what she called it, getting a position. And Antioch back then was on the work study program, and they would send students out to do jobs during the year for one semester of each year. So it was a five year program. And he had an internship at the Toledo Museum and they offered to send him to Yale to get a master's degree in art history and hire him as a curator. And he turned them down because he wanted to be an actor. And my grandmother just flipped. And. He felt guilty about it all his life because he was supposed to get a position and get the other kids through college. And instead he became an actor, which is not a position.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. But did he Ultimately, he had success at it. But were there years where he was more of an itinerant?

[Robin Lithgow]

Well, he was very successful, but never monetarily. We were always poor. He started out in The Great Depression. And there was the WPA program, Works Projects Administration, you know, Halle Flanagan theater program all throughout the country. So he was able to work when he went to New York. When that program ended, he took a job teaching. And then the war started and he went into the Army. And when he came out of the army, he had the veterans bill, and he could get a master's degree at Cornell. And then he. Antioch, asked him to come back and teach there. So he went back and right away started. He had already started a summer program there called the Antioch Area Theater. And so we would be there a couple of. I remember being there when I was 2 and 3 years old in the summers, but they asked him to come back and teach. So when he went back to Antioch, he started the Antioch Shakespeare Festival. Those first five years of the Shakespeare Festival, he did every single play, although he condensed the three Henry VI plays into two.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. I read that that was so uncommon that he was commended by the Queen of England herself for putting on the entire Shakespearean canon.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah, he was. He was. He did. I think he did. Maybe there was one play, I think maybe Cymbeline, that he did the first North American professional production of it.

[Jack Wilson]

So my guess is there were probably people coming from all over because some of these productions, it may have been their. Their first or their. They might have thought it would be their only chance to see it performed live.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah. Well, what happened? I mean, he would get these wonderful actors from New York who were just dying to do classics. And it was a great experience for them because they would do seven or eight roles a summer. How do you do that? You start out rehearsing on Wednesday morning. You dress, rehearse. Sunday night, you tech. You tech. Sunday night, you dress, rehearse. Monday night, you open Tuesday night, you start rehearsing the next one Wednesday morning. And you do that for eight weeks, which is pretty rigorous schedule for an actor, Right? Yeah. He'd have to stagger them. So you didn't. You know, you'd play Othello one week and the third Huntsman the next week, you know. And of course, they'd have to know their. At least their big roles way in advance. So they have to come prepared, knowing the lines.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Robin Lithgow]

And then they rehearsed. They put in long hours. I don't know how they got away with it with Equity, but they did, and it was an equity company, although they used a lot of local talent, too.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And so that started when I was eight. So by the time I was 13, I had seen every Single play. And I would sit behind my. My dad when he was directing. I just loved watching him direct. He was. He didn't direct all of them, but when he directed, I would watch.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And sit next to when is putting on makeup and hang out with the actors and cue them. And I just. It was just the best, funnest thing you could do as a kid. And all the kids, actually, all the kids in town, we were like a little juvenile army. They all hung out around the actors. It was the. It was. It was the most happening thing in southern Ohio.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Because you were. You were. Were you on the stage or you were sort of gophers and.

[Robin Lithgow]

Well, if they. If they needed a little body, I was always willing to volunteer. I played the younger prince in Richard iii, which I thought was a play about a man, a very kind uncle with a hunchback, because in the scene, he's very kind to us. And my. My younger brother John, who I think I must have been eight when I played that little boy with my page boy. My younger brother John would have been six. And he was furious that I got the part and has since lied. He has actually said in an interview that he played for young prince. I called him up, I said, you dare? And he said, what do you expect me to do? You robbed me of my first nature role. But it was me. And I also, of course, the two of us were fairies in Midsummer Extreme. And there were occasional ladies in Mating, In Waiting when I got tall enough and things like that. But he was the one who became the actor.

[Jack Wilson]

And it sounds like there were different productions going up in different cities. Was your family in one location or were you traveling from place to place or what kind of a life was it?

[Robin Lithgow]

The Antioch Festival became a little bit too professional to be housed at a university, and there was tension about that. And so my dad resigned from a tenured position, which was kind of shattering thing for our family.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And we went on the road and the festival migrated first to Toledo and then to Akron, always in Ohio, and then finally to Cleveland, where it's still going. The Great Lake Shakespeare Festival is still going, I think. I mean, I think it is. Last I checked.

[Jack Wilson]

Were you able to go to school? Was this just in the summers that you did this, or was this kind of like a vagabond theater life?

[Robin Lithgow]

I went to five different high schools.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, wow.

[Robin Lithgow]

My older brother had got a scholarship to a private school, so he wasn't subjected to the same kind of migration that we were. But John and I remember it would be shattering each time we moved. But then we. We'd make friends and start over and then move again. And I remember sitting in the first couple of days in school, in the middle of the semester, trying to make new friends, crying, my desk crying. But we always made friends. We always. And we found out that you could make friends everywhere. So that was a good skill. As far as academically, it was kind of a disaster. But we were. I would say we were kind of homeschooled because my dad read to us every night from the Classics and we just were on our own. I mean, my dad and mom were completely absorbed by the theater. But theater is a great education, which is kind of the point of my book. Yes, that theater was a huge part of Shakespeare's education. And I think that why he and his entire generation were so smart.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, well, let's talk about that a little bit. I was going to ask how integral Shakespeare was to your educational development, but maybe we should start with Shakespeare and his relationship with the theater and what you found there.

[Robin Lithgow]

Well, you know, the instigating thing that happened with me in deciding to write my book was that I had been in English and teacher who did plays, you know, for several years in high school and saw I was in. It was an inner city school and a lot of the students. It was a small inner city school, a magnet school, and many of my students had never even seen a play, you know, so we would start the semester and I'd say, we're going to put on a Shakespearean play. What's a play? You know, some of them thought Shakespeare was my father because I had recordings of my father reading Shakespeare. So they thought, they thought. But Porsche was a car back then. That's the level that my students were at. And I would just watch them absolutely blossom. And they loved, loved doing the plays. And what was fascinating to me was that very often I had a lot of non English speakers, Hispanic kids mainly, and they were in the language acquisition mode already. So they would learn Shakespeare, to them was just like learning a Philadelphia accent. You know, it was easy and they would be the first to learn it. And the ones who understood it the best because their brains were language triggered, you know.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

Like, we should all be so lucky.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And so they. They were great. That was great for them. And I had a lot of kids who were in the 9th and 10th grade and were still not reading above a 3rd grade level and they could do Shakespeare. You know, they'd learn the line and they. And then I'd see The impact in English classes. So there were all sorts of ways that these. I saw these kids who were doing these plays were improving across the board in all of their academic subjects, certainly in the subjects I taught them. And so I thought, well, there's a trigger there. But then I was reading Soul of the Age, Shakespeare's Life by. I forget his name right now. It's a great biography, by the way. It's fantastic. But he mentioned in the chapter on his education, he mentioned the colloquies and that they were very funny. They were by Erasmus, and they were very funny. And I thought, well, I should read those colloquies. Well, I grew up loving Shakespeare, but mainly I loved the colloquial characters. You know, the barmaids and the clowns and the sassy women and the prostitutes and the thieves and Falstaff and all of the funny ones. They're the ones I loved. And of course, the handsome princes and stuff like that. But mainly I love those funny ones. So I thought, well, I should read these colloquies. I ordered them and I started reading them, and I thought, oh, my God, has nobody ever read these things? Because so many of Shakespeare's characters come right out of the colloquies, like, almost word for word.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, we'll take a quick break here. This is where our conversation got cut off. Robin was starting to tell me about her reading of Erasmus's colloquies, which were Latin exercises, dialogues to be read by students learning Latin, which were used all over Europe and which Shakespeare would have read in his school. In fact, he would have performed these along with his fellow students. And I think you can say that later, Shakespeare breathed life into the colloquies by including them in his plays in that special way that geniuses have of taking what they need and taking a little bit here and a little bit there and turning it all into magic. But we can also say perhaps that before the years when Shakespeare breathed life into the colloquies, the colloquies breathed life into him. We'll let Robin tell the story. We pick things up where Robin is telling us about the colloquies and Shakespeare's education and listeners, I want you to listen for two moments that I'm going to talk about later. Two things that made me love the Lithgows. We'll talk about that at the end. Okay, so I want to get the name of the book here. I've got it. I think it was by Jonathan Bate. Does that sound right? Soul of the Age, a biography of the mind of William Shakespeare. So you were just to kind of summarize. You were reading that book. It pointed you toward these colloquies by Erasmus. And when you dug into those, you started seeing these connections through your knowledge of the plays and especially some of the characters that you loved so much. And it pointed you towards some discoveries that maybe had not been made before, or you were having a hard time finding if anyone had made these connections before. So why don't we proceed from there?

[Robin Lithgow]

Okay. I realized then there's just dozens and dozens of connections that you. You find between the colloquy scenes, specific characters, specific lines, you know, in the colloquies. That made me realize that Shakespeare was performing those colloquies when he was a kid. They weren't translated into English. He performed in Latin.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

So obviously he was pretty good at Latin.

[Jack Wilson]

But when you say performed them, do you mean like, with a teacher in a classroom, or are you talking about performances like on a st. No, no.

[Robin Lithgow]

They would have been. They. I don't know for sure, but I assume they would have been classroom performances.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And the students, you know, the classes were huge. They had a teacher and a prepositor who would. An older student and an usher or two ushers, depending on the size. So there were maybe three people that you could recite to. The kids would have worked it out, worked out the scenes on their own, and they probably even wrote plays. They did write plays, yeah. For instance, I'm absolutely certain that he. The first draft of Taming the Shrew was a. Was a collaboration of a bunch of silly schoolboys in Stratford. But. But he would have performed them for probably an older student or an usher. They wouldn't have been. They were kind of like extracurricular activities. You got to do colloquies if you finished all your other Cicero kind of thing.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And then I started learning about physical rhetoric a lot. I mean, rhetoric was originally a good man speaking. Well, it was a rhetor. Was a speaker, not a writer. So rhetoric's origin was in oral language. Rhetoric was about performance. And you realize that he was at the end of 2000 years, where most of education was oral, and you had to keep an enormous amount in your head. And in order to be a statesperson or persuasive businessman or a clergyman or a courtier, you had to be able to hold court. You had to speak well, brilliantly. You had to know how to use rhetorical devices brilliantly. Otherwise, you were completely irrelevant. You know, you just didn't matter to Anybody? So rhetoric was huge. And the combination of rhetoric and the colloquies, I thought, oh, my God, these kids were on their feet reciting. They also had to recite their lessons every day. You know, every week. They'd memorize about 10 lines per week of some of the. Of their. Of the classic poetry they were reading, and they had to recite that. So that was. And you didn't just stand up and babble. You had to recite it, you know, using your entire body and your emotional range and everything. So there was enormous amount of training in presentation. And every little boy who went to a Latin grammar school in England, which was all. But Henry VIII had increased the literacy enorm. So all across England, there was a Latin grammar school. So there were literally tens of thousands of little boys learning rhetoric and reading colloquies and performing every day. And I, in my experience, performance really, really does improve cognition and empathy. Yeah, I saw my students hugely improve. Mostly. Mostly, you know, a lot of Hispanic and Latin and black American students who would just overnight turn into great English students. I'd have them both in English and in theater, because it was a small school. And I would just see this amazing love for literature and reading and poetry. I mean, I had kids who were, you know, gang, gang, gang kids. And I would. I once took them to a play. I would take them to a lot of plays. I took them to a play that was all based on love letters of romantics in the 19th century. You couldn't be more alien from the African American experience from the 19th century. Romantics from England. Right. And Russia. Tchaikovsky. These kids, they would line up at my door because I had run off copies of the poems from the play. They would line up at my door begging me to make Xerox copies of these for them. They were so into poetry, and I just thought it was a unique position for me to be a person well versed in the classics, but teaching African American and English learners and seeing it just light up their minds. And a lot of them went to college and did very well. It was so clear to me that performance skills really profoundly increase cognition and empathy and presentation ability to speak in public and to speak convincingly, all of that.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Some of the things I think we associate with the theater, learning vocabulary and memorization and public speaking and having confidence and that kind of thing. But it sounds like what you were unlocking was something even deeper, which is the experience someone might have in looking at a situation and saying, here is a person who wants something he cannot have. And how is he going to try to get it? Or here is a person who is afraid of something or who is afraid of everyone learning the truth about this person. Or it's more like human situations. And, as you say, empathy that is coming out of this experience people have in either watching plays or playing the parts themselves. And it sounds like you've connected that all the way back from what a young Shakespeare may have learned and his generation of students to the students that you had in Los Angeles in much more recent times.

[Robin Lithgow]

Right, exactly. And it wasn't just Shakespeare, of course. The oral tradition of education goes way, way, way, way back, and the teaching of rhetoric goes way back. So I just connected it to the literary brilliance of the day. Because people talk about the golden age of literature, and it really is astounding when you think of it, that before 1585, there was nothing but popular, you know, usually kind of scatological, silly poetry, romantic poetry written in English. There were some sonnets, but not much. And then along comes Sidney and Molcaster, who was one of the teacher of Shakespeare's teachers. And Mulcaster used theater every single day in his teaching. He used to train students in performance skills, and he had them perform. They performed at Court, a lot of the Latin schoolboys performed at Crispus and at Shrovetide, they would perform Latin play, or they would perform in English or Latin, but for the public. And a lot of them even had theaters built into their schools. Certainly the Merchant Taylor School, where Molcaster taught, did so. There were a lot of playwriting schoolmasters. But Mulcaster happened to write a book about pedagogy, which is an absolutely appallingly difficult book to read because he didn't write. He wrote in English, although he was a scholar, but he wasn't. Nobody was writing in English back then, and there was no, you know, guide to good English. They're really difficult to read. But. But he goes into great detail about how to speak loud and soft, how to laugh, how to cry and speak, you know, he. He goes into tremendous detail on performance skills, even so far as, you know, training kids to fill their mouths with rocks and recite language throughout the way. The way the ancient order. Yeah, yeah, did. Yes, exactly. You. You know your stuff. So very, very similar skills in training actors today. You know, the same thing actors did, you know, get a little study very, very long. You see actors doing the same things, the same exercises now that Moldcaster had his students doing in the 1560s and 70s and 80s. So obviously, students were getting a Ton of theater. And I think that's why that. That age of genius. Oh, what I was saying was before 1580, there was 1585. There was very little poetry written. Then you have Sydney and then you have all these playwrights come along. I mean, there's. There's 35 of them who were many. When Shakespeare died, he. He was. I don't know if you saw my speech, but he was pretty much forgotten. He was like old, old, like an old grandpa when. When Ben Johnson died, because he wrote plays up to his. The very end and never retired. There was mourning in the streets, There were parades in the streets. They shut down England. There was, you know, people were wailing. He was way, way, way, way more famous than Shakespeare. And that didn't change until the end of the century when. And then, of course, in the. In the 19th century, they had these big Shakespeare competitions and he just. He just took over the canon.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And so people get the idea. Was the only playwright of the time, but he was not only that, not the only one. He was not even the most famous.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. A whole generation who had a similar education, it sounds like.

[Robin Lithgow]

Exactly. They all went through those Latin grammar schools. They all got that training.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

They all started writing in school.

[Jack Wilson]

In looking at education today, which you've done and has been kind of a career for you, do you feel like we're. Are we swimming against the stream? Does it feel like just one budget cut after another? Do you feel like you're a voice in the wilderness kind of howling? Or do you see some ups and downs over the years? Or how do you assess our use of performative arts in education?

[Robin Lithgow]

I definitely feel like I'm sitting upstream and I definitely feel like a voice in the wilderness. Although there's a huge, huge teacher resistance to our testing culture, and it is beginning to weaken. Of course, we know that, but it is still dominant.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And I just don't get it. I mean, there's nothing about testing, nothing that improves a student's ability to think or improves a ability to love learning, which is. I think the only purpose for school is to engender a lifelong lust for knowledge. That's the only reason to go to school, as far as I'm concerned. Now, that, of course, is not true, but it is. It is numero uno.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

I just think that the formative years, you know, kindergarten through sixth grade, there should be no testing. It's. It's antithetical to love of learning, and it serves no purpose. Today. You don't need facts. You can get facts at your fingertips with an iPhone. But what you need is the ability to structure the infinity of facts that are at your fingertips, to give context to them and to have the kind of brain that can value the facts and sort them and prove them and disprove them and debate them, et cetera. That. That's what you need in education, and that's what Shakespeare's education gave him. And I personally don't believe he hated school. I mean, there's. Of course, everybody hates school. I hated school. We all don't like to get up in the morning and go to school, but. But I think he had a lot of fun at school. And I. And I also think. Don't think school was nearly as grueling as they say, because first of all, they got two hours for lunch every day because they all. They had to go home for lunch. So they. They had from 11 to 1 every single day free, or maybe they're helping their fathers in the stores. But they also had an hour of physical education every day. So that's three hours a day out of that long, long day where they were on their feet. And in addition to that, he was on his feet reciting, performing, doing colloquies, writing plays. I think it was a pretty rigorous but actually engaging education. I would dispute the people who say it was just drill and kill, dark and dull.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it could have been. And that. I mean, that's where we're headed now, it seems like, with the testing regime. And I'll tell you, I had the experience when I graduated from college years and years ago, I went and taught in Taiwan, and they were. You know, it's hard to blame different countries for where they are on the scale of these things. They were trying to. To make sure they were fighting an existential battle, and they wanted their young people to be able to pass tests and be educated and all of that. But it had just become this world where young children were cramming for these tests and having these long hours of nothing but drilling facts and figures and memorization and the different subjects and everything. And I, as I came in as an English teacher, I had some room to do things with them, like write creative stories or put together a novel as a class and do plays and things like that. And you could just see them opening up like flowers, like flowers that were turning to the sun. You could see it in them that they needed to do it and that they were growing and they were more enthusiastic about it. And. And luckily, the parents loved it because they would look at the results and say, oh, wow, my child wrote 50 pages in English. And I would look at it and say, it was not difficult to have this. I only assigned him five pages. And he did the other 45 on his own because he was so excited about this story he was coming up with. And you could just see the growth that would come from something outside of the rote memorization and the preparing for the next test. And it does seem like we've really gotten that out, I think because tests are something that are measurable, and if people are hostile to the idea of teachers or education, they assume that we have to measure it in order to make sure that it's actually happening or something. And you really are making a persuasive case for me that theater needs to be an integral part of what we expose our children to during their school day.

[Robin Lithgow]

Absolutely. Every day. Every day, Yeah. I mean, not just theater, the arts. The music is also incredibly important.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Robin Lithgow]

Connecting to math, and that's another performance skill. I mean, music and theater and dance are the performative skills. They're all very, very important. I used. I remember it when I was a theater specialist. I would go in and watch my teachers teach, and then I would talk to their. The teachers who. The classroom teachers who they worked with. I remember one saying, oh, you have no idea how much easier it is to teach math after they've had dance. And I said, I know exactly what you're saying. I could even put it into words. You know, it's time, space, continuum. Dance is a tremendous support to mathematics and music.

[Jack Wilson]

And the other thing I want to say to parents out there who are making these decisions and helping their school boards make these decisions decisions is we do have a value on team sports. And my kids play sports, and my nephew has gotten the theater bug. And as I've been talking to my sister about our children who are about the same age, it's made me realize how much that what we say we value in team sports, he's getting from his theatrical experience that he's. He's learning teamwork. He's learning the importance of practice and how that can pay off in performance. He's dealing with disappointment and frustration when he doesn't get the part or when something doesn't go his way. And all of those things are things that we say, you know, team sports are essential for this for a growing child. And theater can provide those same lessons.

[Robin Lithgow]

As well as can dance and music. But theater has the extra quality of being about story. And I think that our brains, my little bit of research, and all the cascading evidence coming out of cognitive research. Now, our brains are wired to story, and theater is story. That's what it is. So it has that added advantage.

[Jack Wilson]

Beautiful. Okay, we're coming to the end here, but I have a surprise bonus question for you.

[Robin Lithgow]

Oh, good.

[Jack Wilson]

Are you ready?

[Robin Lithgow]

Sure.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay.

[Robin Lithgow]

I hope I can answer it.

[Jack Wilson]

One day you're wandering backstage at a theater and encounter an old trunk filled with props. One of them is a dusty lamp, laughing and making jokes about genies. You rub the side of the lamp with your shirt sleeve and to your surprise, a figure floats out. Robin. She says, I am the genie of the theater. You have been granted one wish only. The rules are very strict about what you are allowed to choose. You have been living a selfless life, and it's time for you to be selfish. We will grant you the right to produce one play. You can either produce a play performed by the greatest actors in the world and you can include an amateur child in the production, or you can produce a play that will be performed by amateur children and you can select one of the greatest actors in the world to be a part of the production. Which option do you choose and why?

[Robin Lithgow]

Off the top of my head.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

Okay. Let's say Henry iv, Part one, and ask my bro to play Falstaff.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. And then you're gonna populate it with amateur children.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Okay.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

So you.

[Robin Lithgow]

There's actually a terrific guy. Yeah, I had to do that off the top of my head. I'm not even sure I would give that. Part one is probably in the end, my favorite play because of Hal and Falstaff, you know?

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Has your brother played Falstaff before?

[Robin Lithgow]

No, he's never played Falstaff. And he would love to play Falstaff. He's played Lear.

[Jack Wilson]

I feel like we should make this happen.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah. A children's production. Boy, would that ever be cool. There's a fantastic teacher. Do you have a minute more to ramble?

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, yes, absolutely.

[Robin Lithgow]

There's a fantastic teacher in la. For years he taught a fifth grade class in an inner city school in Koreatown. And every year he put on a full length Shakespeare play. A different one each year. And they were wonderful. And not only did the kids perform it, every kid in the play. And I would go while he was doing the rehearsal. Rafe. Rafe Esquith. His name, Rafe Esquith. You can look him up. He's written several plays.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay.

[Robin Lithgow]

Every kid in his class learns every line from the play that they're doing that year. So if you walk into the class during the day, take one kid aside, and they'll just start reciting the play. I mean, he cuts them. They're only about an hour and a half long, but the kids can recite every line in the cut version. And every kid in his class has to learn a musical instrument. So the plays are done with music. And it's usually rock songs, old rock songs that he finds that refer to one aspect of the play. So they have a rock band and a Shakespeare performance, and they're just amazing, amazing, amazing. And they did. I can't remember if he just did part one or if he put the two of them together.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, right. The Falstaff. Like Orson Welles did.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah. At the end, where. Falstaff. I know you not, old man. Do you know that line?

[Jack Wilson]

Yep.

[Robin Lithgow]

Every eye in the house was wet. It was so moving, these children. When Falstaff is rejected, everybody wept.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

That summer I went to New York and stayed with my brother. And he got the last remaining ticket to see it at the Music center with John's old nemesis, that other actor who gets all the parts before he gets them. I'll think of it. Forgotten his name. I probably. Because I resent him. But he's a friend of John's. Anyway. He played Falstaff at the Kennedy Center. At the Lincoln Center. Excuse me. At the Lincoln center in New York. And John got me the last remaining ticket. He didn't say anything. He'd seen it. He said, I'll be interested to know what you think. And it was absolutely sold out. You could not get a ticket. He went over there every single day. He knew I was coming. He walked. He lived near there. He walked, Walked over every single day to see if there'd been a return ticket. And one day he got one, and I got to see it, and I was so excited.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And I would say that his performance was flawless, but I didn't shed a tear. I didn't shed a tear. It was too perfect. It wasn't. It wasn't. The false Falstaff has to be. He can't be perfect. He just can't.

[Jack Wilson]

Was this. Was this Kevin Klein?

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you see that performance?

[Jack Wilson]

No, I didn't, but I guessed when you said that he and your brother are often considered for the same parts. Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

And he's a perfect. He's a perfect actor. He's brilliant. He's. I could imagine. I can kind of envision what you're talking about. That he's.

[Robin Lithgow]

It was surgical precision. It was just perfect. And it was unreal feeling. I didn't have any emotion.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

And maybe it's because I had just seen such a. Such a moving performance by race kids, but I was crushed. I was so disappointed because I live for great. You know, when I can see a great Shakespeare production, I'm in ecstasy.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And it needed some vulnerability or some. Some pathos that wasn't there because the acting was so good.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah. And I can't even tell you what it needed. Ethan Hawke was also in. It played Hotspur. And that was disturbing, too, because at the very beginning, you know, it starts out with Henry IV saying, so beaten as we are, so won with care. So, yeah, that. That sad, sad soliloquy at the beginning of the play, and Ethan Hawke is placed above him and looking down on him. You never place a character above a king and storming like a hawk, you know, walking back and forth, watching the king recite this painful speech, angrily watching him, and it was so jarring. I just hated the production. But it got great reviews. Boy, people flocked to it.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, you know what I find very touching is that I gave you the entire world of actors, and the one that you chose was your brother. And you obviously have a very high bar for what you expect out of your Falstaff, and you have the confidence in him that he will be able to bring that kind of a performance to bear.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, I agree. I mean, I think he's amazing. And I have been astounded that the. I think everybody probably comes to him in a different way, different generations. Some probably today, maybe know him first from the children's books he's read or that kind of thing. For me, he was the father in Footloose. I'm a child of the 80s, and so that was kind of, for me, he's always been, oh, there's the dad in Footloose. The guy who shut down the town and prevented dancing, but came around at the end. But yet, when I see him play Winston Churchill or the other parts that I've seen him in, and I do feel like he can just take me anywhere he wants me to go.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah, yeah. He's a wonderful act. I have a funny story about the Churchill, because I was binge watching. I don't have a television, so I watch everything on the computer, and my husband and I were binge watching Churchill. I think we watched three episodes, and I had just watched, you know, the episode with the. With the portrait, and the phone rang. And it was the night before the election. And John and I often confer on the down ballot before the election just because neither of us does our research thoroughly. So we. Yeah, we sort of do last minute cramming. So we spent about a half an hour going over the down ballot. And it didn't even occur to me to say, I've just been watching you play Churchill, because it's the only time that he completely disappeared in a role. I always see John. I always see my little brother. Yeah, in every role, but I didn't see him in Churchill. He just. He just. He just became another person. So this is hilarious. I had to call him back the next day and say, by the way, I had just put down the television when you called.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Robin Lithgow]

Did he walked away from it?

[Jack Wilson]

Did he take that as the greatest compliment you could give him? Or did he feel like, boy, my big sister. Yeah. Right. Well, these stories are wonderful. I wish I could. Wish we had more time to talk, but this has been fantastic. Robin Lythgoe, thank you so much for joining me today on the History of Literature.

[Robin Lithgow]

And I'm so looking forward to looking at some of your older posts.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, I hope they hold up.

[Robin Lithgow]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Mmm. That's gonna do it for this episode of the History of Literature. Wasn't that fantastic? My thanks to Robin Lithgow for joining me and for all the years she's spent advancing the cause of arts and education. I told you there were two moments I wanted to talk to you about. One, I told my wife about. My wife and I hardly ever talk about the podcast. We have so many other things going on with. With kids and school and work and health concerns and everything else. But I told her about Robin and John calling each other to talk about the down ballot races. Is there anything better than that, man? The civic duty, the respect. Here's John Lithgow. He could be sitting on a beach somewhere drinking himself into a stupor and bossing people around. And here he is calling his sister to make sure he knows which judges and school board members and city council persons deserve his vote. And she's doing the same. That's awesome. A brother and sister trusting each other, checking in. And the other story I love is him going to the Lincoln center every day to try to get her a ticket to Henry iv, which is sold out. Wouldn't you expect him to send someone else or just not to bother? And instead he runs over there every day to get his big sister a ticket to a play he wants her to see. Just amazing. I told my wife these stories, and she said, are they from the Midwest? Yep, they're from Ohio, so maybe that's part of it. And maybe we can also say, as I sort of said at the beginning, that they're not only from Ohio, just like I'm not only from Wisconsin, and Mike's not only from Manhattan, and Margo's not only from Scotland, and Thomas and Ron aren't only from Australia, and Blake's not only from New Orleans. We also come from the land of literature, and we look out for one another. Sometimes we get a little carried away, but that's perfectly fine. That's allowed. The history of literature is part of the Podglomerate Podcasting Network, www.thepodglomerate.com and Lidhub Radio. Hello, I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

[Robin Lithgow]

Sam.

[Jack Wilson]

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