The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
From Mahabharata to Workplace Justice
What happens when an epic Hindu poem collides with modern workplace bias?
Artistic-director Sharanya Rao joins Kirk to trace three big chapters of her journey: consulting on Mahabharata Tales for Austin Shakespeare, founding Leela Indian Community Theatre, and creating Anklets in the Boardroom, a Theatre of the Oppressed production where spectators jump onstage to rewrite real discrimination scenarios. https://www.leelatheatre.org/
In this conversation:
Cutting the Mahabharata down to a 2-hour stage piece (and the “must-have” scenes)
Why Austin needed a South-Asian community stage—and how Leela was born in 2012
Theatre of the Oppressed 101: “spect-actors,” no spectators
How story circles turn real workplace stories into live scripts
The power of name-pronunciation, audience agency, and non-violent rehearsal
May 16-18 performances of Anklets in the Boardroom at Austin PBS