Hello and welcome to WORDTheatre Weekly: The Short Story Podcast where great authors and actors meet! I’m your host, Cedering Fox, WORDTheatre's Founder & Artistic Director.

This coming week, on April 23rd, the literary world celebrates the birthday of one of the English language’s greatest writers, the poet for all time, William Shakespeare. (Whether that was actually his birthday or not is up for scholarly debate, but we celebrate anyway!) So in honor of The Bard, this week we’re bringing you a beautiful story inspired by one of his most iconic characters. This story is called “21st Century Juliet,” written by the prolific and gorgeously talented Rose Tremain and performed at a WORDTheatre Event in London in 2014 by the talentedly gorgeous Gemma Chan. While we figured early on that Gemma would be a star, it was her roles in Crazy Rich Asians and Mary Queen of Scots that shot her into the stratosphere. As thoughtful as she is intelligent, this English actress is a powerful advocate for Asian representation.

Before we get to the story, I want to let you know about upcoming events in Los Angeles, New York and London!

On Thursday, April 24th in Santa Monica, California, come meet Pushcart Prize winning author Ben Shattuck and hear two of his gorgeous short stories.Then we are off to Manhattan where we will honor John Edgar Wideman in an evening of stories & music on Wednesday, May 7th. Author David Means will lead a brief post performance conversation with John. And then we head to The Crazy Coqs in London for WORDS & Wickets: A Literary & Musical Celebration of Cricket on May 19th! For more information visit WORDTheatre.org and WORDTheatreUK.org!

Please note that WORDTheatre holds the copyright to these recordings and no portion of anything you hear on WORDTheatre Weekly, our short story podcast, may be reproduced without permission.
So without further ado, here is “21st Century Juliet” by Rose Tremain, performed by Gemma Chan.

GEMMA CHAN PERFORMS THE STORY.
We hope you’ve enjoyed “21st Century Juliet,” written by Rose Tremain and performed by Gemma Chan. If you'd like to pick up books by the authors that you hear on this podcast, please visit our Bookshop.org/shop/WORDTheatre, and you will be helping two non-profits!

On behalf of Kirsty Peart, my UK producing partner, and myself, we'd like to thank the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Randy & Jane Sinisi and their Phiphen Studios | Post NJ, our Executive Coordinator, Scout RIley, Our Literary Coordinator, Jason Goodman, our podcast editor, Maya Johnson, and Emerson college for supplying valued interns.

Thank you for listening. Until next week, this is Cedering Fox signing off!