Sunday Feature: Still Will

For the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, Laura Barton discusses silences and intimacies in the Bard's theatre plays, exploring the acoustic qualities of the circumstances in which they were performed. She is joined by actress Niamh Cusack, who has played Desdemona and Juliet in large theatres and also Paulina in The Winter's Tale at the small Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Acoustician Byron Harrison imagines the world inhabited by actors on the Elizabethan stage and unpicks the science of theatre design. Shakespeare scholar Lesel Dawson looks for moments of silent wonder, resistance, horror and narrative tension in the plays and Steven Connor considers how Shakespeare communicates 'beyond words', looking with ears, hearing with eyes