Stephen Longstaffe

Happily acting and improvising away after retiring as a university lecturer in early modern English theatre.

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

@michael_merrick If you take transferable skills seriously (that is, explicitly teach and assess them) it goes some way toward dealing with the issue. Our old English curriculum at Cumbria c. 2012-17 made a decent fist of it. https://t.co/0Fgl5CPBUj

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

I'm doing my improvised Shakespeare show a few times this spring and summer - first up, part of the triple bill opening the mighty Liverpool Improvisation Festival next week!

Tickets: https://t.co/rP12agm0By

[The Phoenix Remix @ThePhoenixRemix]

Today’s Featured Liverpool Improv Festival Act – INTERVIEW –  Shakespeare On The Spot

@stephenlongstaffe @liverpool_improv_festival #improv #interview #liverpool https://t.co/LPFuIJGT8M

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

@RobertsonAlizon I love that line!

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

Carnival versus Lent!

Despite bidding many farewells to it, there is still far too much of my own flesh.

I am a man more thinned against than thinning.

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

@CumbriaEnglish You can watch her litfest session on Helm this evening here, though you have to buy a ticket. https://t.co/SOq0MJYsbe

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

@RobertsonAlizon Cheers A!

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

I'm finally performing this in Liverpool on Saturday. I can't wait! Part of #Liverpoolfringe2025.

[Eleanor Parker @ClerkofOxford]

A week past Michaelmas, this is also the Michaelmas moon of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight':

'Thus runs the year in yesterdays many,
And winter wends again, as the world asks,
in truth,
Until Michaelmas moon
Was come with winter's wage...'

https://t.co/y94O3ztPsT

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

@lizziecanttweet @ShakesInstitute @shakescenery @DewiHughes Congratulations Lizzie!

[Players of St Peter @PlayersStPeter]

Auditions for this year's production of scenes from the N-Town cycle are on Monday 18 and Thursday 28 August. Performances 4-6 December, Chalk Farm NW3. We're looking for actors, singers & backstage helpers. Full details on website https://t.co/AtlnDX8cyg

[Dino Sofos @dinosofos]

We're kicking off Crossed Wires festival with a piece of audio history! Jarvis Cocker has recorded a special version of the Shipping Forecast to mark its centenary. It'll be played in full at a special Ships live show at the @crossedwires_/@BBCSounds Fringe today. Thanks Jarv!

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

At Hampton Court yesterday, with Henry VIII's fool Will Summers.

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

My best Shakespeare on the Spot so far, at the King's Arms Salford for the Greater Manchester Improvisation Festival on Saturday. In the misery pic I'm soliloquising about Julius Caesar's assassination - the audience suggestion was that a piano dropped on his head.

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

So excited! Ten 'new' funny early modern plays. I got the weekend pass to see the lot. Proper jokes, generous comic humanity; the same characters, different situations. I'm cast as a grumpy farting old git. Bit of a failure of the imagination there, I feel, but hey. Come!

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

RIP. WSI really gripped my imagination as a theatre student, mostly via the Engineers of the Imagination handbook and the few videos I could find mid-80s. A pioneer vision blending visual arts, humour, ritual, performance and community. https://t.co/lyZYjmV4e4

[The Warburg Institute @Warburg_News]

🃏 The Fool – A Card of New Beginnings

Happy April Fool's Day!

Today, we're sharing The Fool card from the Tarot de Marseille Gassmann deck (c.1865). Symbolising adventure, risk, and new beginnings, The Fool invites us to embrace the unknown and take a leap of faith.

#Tarot

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

@jackiewatson05 Hi Jackie. I did write on KJ and anti-Catholicism 30 years ago, though I'm sure that's been superseded. But given the way claims about the play often involve claims about TR, you might find some useful context in my piece on the earlier play. https://t.co/K6JO8wIjgF

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

I love these 16th century grotesques!

[Flashbak.com @aflashbak]

The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel, 1565 - Flashbak https://t.co/5qF5W2U5WB

[Stephen Longstaffe @SteveLongstaffe]

This raised a chuckle - Plato's theory of Forms, applied to the LFC-PSG game: 'a smash-and-grab of such Platonic perfection that it belongs among the great thinker's higher realm of Ideals'.