You may have read our earlier blog about why our rehearsal room has been all about experimentation, collaboration and starting from scratch.
Today we thought we’d share with you a playlist of tracks that we have been using as inspiration and motivation in our theatre-making process.
The #GlobeEnsemble
Tour Guide and Exhibition Assistant Jon Kaneko-James explores what the area of Bankside would have been like in Shakespeare’s time.
The Globe is a work of beautiful and almost impossible dedication, the result of a mission to reconstruct the best possible version of a timber-framed 16th century amphitheatre and to explore what that building would do to and for performance. Built with the time and money of a dedicated group of supporters, it sits framed by trees next to Tate Modern.
The area has moved on around it. Just as the King’s Pike Garden became warehouses which became Shakespeare’s Globe, the Victorian buildings of the Bankside have become bars and eateries. New buildings replaced old. Breweries became apartment buildings.
However, for a few decades in the 16th and 17th centuries, The Bankside – a handful of streets between what is now London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge – was alive with a strange mixture of industry and entertainment.
From the start, Bankside was where London put things it needed, but didn’t want. The city might have been covered in a perpetual pall of smoke, but there were things that even Londoners didn’t want for a neighbour: dyers, creating their pigments by fermenting ingredients in urine; sulphur workers; mercury boiling – important both for hats and medicine; tanners; brewers; soap makers and paint makers.
These businesses would have rubbed shoulders with the amphitheatres and other, more violent, entertainments of Shakespeare’s world. Park Street, now a mixture of offices and housing, would have been Maiden Lane. A visitor to The Globe on a show day afternoon would have turned onto the street with the Monger Brewery on their left and commercial pike fisheries to their right. The Globe and Rose playhouses would have been surrounded by tanneries, dyers and glassworks.
Alarmingly, for a modern person, plays would have been disrupted by the roars of bears in the local baiting arenas: buildings in similar style to the Globe and Rose, but used for blood sport between animals. Fliers for celebrity bears like Old Harry and George Stone would have papered the area, with occasional glimpses of the animals being wrangled from the bear sheds on what is now the street Bear Gardens, to nearby baiting houses like the Davies amphitheatre and the Hope.
The way home would have either been a dark, hazardous journey across London Bridge, under the heads of those who had offended Elizabeth I, or the slightly more pleasant experience of a ferry ride, leaving behind the smells and noises of the Bankside for the claustrophobic overcrowding of the smoke-haunted city of London.
The Bankside Tour explores the sights and culture of Shakespeare’s Bankside. Tours depart every half an hour from the Shakespeare’s Globe Exhibition on matinee afternoons.
Read more blogs by our Guided Tours & Exhibition staff
Words: Jon Kaneko-James
Photo: From William Smith’s MS. of the Description of England, c. 1580 - The Project Gutenberg eBook, Shakespearean Playhouses, by Joseph Quincy Adams, Wikimedia
Gyre & Gimble’s Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons: A Reimagining plays in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse until Saturday 21 April 2018 and has opened to an amazing audience and critical response.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘Some of the most magical and moving puppeteering you will get to see […] a remarkable evening’
The Times
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‘Transfixing’
Financial Times
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‘Gyre & Gimble have made magic’
The Arts Desk
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘An emotional rollercoaster, filled with touching and charming moments […] A night you will never forget’
BroadwayWorldUK
⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘Feels like something entirely new, a genre unto itself, and a really exciting one at that’
WhatsOnStage
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‘Spellbinding in its simplicity and for the breadth of its emotional canvas’
The Stage
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‘There are not enough words to praise the work of art that the team of The Four Seasons performed’
The Upcoming
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘Puppetry at its finest’
Theatre Bubble
‘This vastly skilled team imbue every tiny, sensitive movement with meaning and feeling’
The Independent
‘This has dramatically transformed for me what is possible with the medium’
Exeunt Magazine
‘Gyre & Gimble are puppet directors at the top of their game’
Time Out
Pictured: puppeteers Elisa De Grey, Ben Thompson, Craig Leo and John Leader, photography by Steve Tanner.
When attending a Guided Tour at Shakespeare’s Globe you’ll hear all manner of stories from our passionate and knowledgable guides. Over the last few months we’ve been sharing blogs by our staff in a new series.
Last week, Tour Guide and Exhibition Assistant Jon Kaneko-James explored what the area of Bankside would have been like in Shakespeare’s time. Today, he’d like to talk to you about another one of his areas of expertise…
As well as being a Tour Guide and Exhibition Assistant at Shakespeare’s Globe, I also write and publish historical research on the Early Modern belief in the supernatural.
Fairies were a definite part of English life in Shakespeare’s era. In 1590 Edmund Spencer’s The Fairie Queene had mythologised Queen Elizabeth as the fairy queen Gloriana. In general, in fact, fairies went through definite period of popularity in literary circles, with the number of published works involving fairies experiencing steady growth from 1598 through to 1610.
Fairies had also long occupied a place in popular culture. The 10th century Leechbook of Bald included a medico-magical spell for curing elf shot, and medieval chroniclers like Gervaise of Tilbery and Geraldus Cambrensis had written detailed stories of the fairy realm and their visits to our world.
In Act Five, Scene Five of The Merry Wives of Windsor Mistress Quickly and the others band together to convince the troublesome Falstaff that if he goes to a secluded place in Windsor forest disguised as a ghost, he will meet the object of his affections – Mistress Ford. When Falstaff arrives wearing horns as a chain as his disguise, he is set upon by children dressed as fairies and chastised in verse for his wicked ways.
For Shakespeare’s audiences, this may well have resonated with the not unamusing crimes of a London con-woman named Judith Philips. The 1595 pamphlet The Bridling, Saddling and Riding of a Rich Churl in Hampshire had documented Philips’ tricking of a rich country miser.
Philips herself had been the wife of a gunmaker named John Pope, before tiring of his modest income and leaving to seek her fortune elsewhere. Described as a fortune teller and ‘Cunning Woman’ (a magical practitioner who sold remedies), Philips heard that the miser – living in Up Somborne – was both greedy and gullible and decided to turn a profit on him.
After first climbing into his garden to plant coins at the dead of night, Philips returned the next day to convince the miser and his wife of her magical link with the queen of the fairies by leading them to dig up the coins, seemingly detected by magic. Obviously, having made a profit, the miser offered her anything she wanted. Judith was not shy to demand.
She asked not only for fourteen pounds (and got it) but also for ‘The largest chamber in your house behung with the finest linen you can get, so that nothing around your chamber but white linen cloth be seen, then you must set five candlesticks in five several places in your chamber, and under every candlestick you must put an angel of gold, all of which was done as she required…’
The final step in the process was the utter humiliation of her mark: Judith saddled and bridled him, rode him three times between the chamber and the holly tree, and left him with instructions that he and his wife must worship the tree naked for at least three hours.
Judith, of course, used the time to clean his house out of valuables, and after a brief pantomime as the fairy queen to subjugate her gulls, she escaped the scene of her crime to Winchester, and eventually to London. Embarrassed by his foolishness, the ‘churl’ initially reported nothing.
For Shakespeare’s audiences, this would be neither the first or the last time that fairies - whether honestly or dishonestly - came into their lives. Whether as the mythical builders of iron age mounds, or the supernatural authority behind a local Cunning Woman’s medicine, fairies would have been an almost commonplace element of daily life.
Photo: The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by Joseph Noel Paton, Google Art Project / Wikimedia
Read more blogs by our Guided Tours & Exhibition staff
Words: Jon Kaneko-James
Shakespeare’s Globe is delighted to announce the return of guitar virtuoso John Williams for a weekend of candlelit concerts in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 July 2018.
Following sell-out shows in 2014 and 2015 described as ‘pure magic’ (Evening Standard), John Williams will return to the Globe this summer to play a pair of concerts alongside two fellow world-renowned musicians, Berta Rojas and Paco Peña. The weekend will mark an international celebration of classical guitar, whilst furthering the centuries-old tradition of acoustic concerts in London’s indoor playhouses. Speaking of the concerts, John commented: “It’s great to be back in the best and most intimate of spaces for us to play in.”
On Saturday 21 July, John will explore music ranging from Vivaldi to Venezuelan pieces, sharing the stage with Paraguayan guitarist extraordinaire Berta Rojas. Berta’s repertoire will pay homage to her compatriot and classical guitar pioneer, Agustín Barrios Mangoré.
The following evening, John and Paco Peña will perform a selection of their favourite works in celebration of their 49 year friendship. Multi-award-winning guitarist Paco Peña will continue to redefine our perceptions of flamenco, whilst John will explore Spanish pieces from the sixteenth century onwards.
40 students from 20 drama schools arrived at Shakespeare’s Globe on Friday and spent the entire weekend singing, workshopping and dancing together as part of the Sam Wanamaker Festival 2018.
On Sunday they presented duologues from plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to a roaring crowd. Photographer Cesare De Giglio captured them on stage and also backstage in the lead up to their energetic performance which ended with one mighty ‘Globe jig’!
The event was a gorgeous celebration of the conservatoire training available in the UK and lovely to watch emerging actors perform together as a company.
The 1,500 strong audience raised the ‘roof’ (well, we don’t have a roof but you know what we mean!) in support of the students - on Sunday Shakespeare’s Globe was pulsating with energy, at its liveliest and loudest.
Naturally we can’t wait to do it all again next year. See you in 2019!
Photography by Cesare De Giglio
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm is a playwright and screenwriter - her newest play, Emilia was written specifically for the Globe Theatre.
A story of the often beguiling and always fascinating Emilia Bassano - whom many consider to have been a muse and inspiration for Shakespeare - Emilia opens on 10 August 2018.
When Michelle Terry asked me to write this play she didn’t just send me off to scribble away on my own; she opened up a treasure box of resources that I guess only places like the Globe can give a writer. The first thing we both recognised from the point of commission was that it would be a very quick turnaround for a new play that would have a cast of thirteen, plus a band, and would be premiered on the Globe Theatre stage less than a year after I signed on the dotted line. Because of this, Michelle essentially said ‘whatever you need, we will let you have’, which are the best eight words a writer could hear (other than ‘we love the script, here’s your royalty cheque’, of course).
The first part of the process involved speaking to Bill Barclay (the Globe’s Director of Music who will be composing) and getting a steer on his style, his tastes and the history of music. I also met with Dr Will Tosh and Dr Farah Karim-Cooper who are two of the incredible academics that work at the Globe and who, with their team, have since our first meeting been providing me with essays, research material and amazing insight into the world Emilia Bassano would have been living in.
This isn’t the first historical piece I’ve worked with, but it’s the most detailed in terms of recognising that this is a period of time that many people know and love and I can’t just busk it. The context around Shakespeare and his possible involvement in Emilia’s life is also a layer that I have had to make sure I know enough about before writing. I have also been working with them on such things as gender politics, feminism and race in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which have a huge influence on my play, but again add another layer. This is by far the most complex play I’ve tried to write but, as a result, it’s so much fun.
Nicole Charles (who will direct the play) and I met in December for a couple of days of chewing over the research we had been given already and reading books we had both sourced that were relevant to what we are trying to achieve and essentially make sure we are on the same page. I must say that as a writer this is a gorgeous way to work - to be with my director from the very beginning so that we are both working towards a common goal and she’s not playing catch-up a few drafts down the line is a massive gift. The fact that Michelle commissioned this with no script in existence means that everyone has started from scratch on this and therefore I’ve been able to really draw on people’s opinions, research and ideas before sitting down to write.
Talking of writing - that came at the start of February! Nicole and I had another couple of days together researching and talking in January before I sat down and wrote the first draft in two weeks. This isn’t everyone’s method but it is mine (particularly since having kids - carving out dedicated time to write is tricky and I will address this in my next blog, I think). I like to think about something, research it, talk to people for a bit and then sit down and write in a massive flurry. In fact, for the first of those two weeks I think I only wrote about twenty pages as I kept finding more things I wanted to read! So that final push was full-on but really exciting because I knew what I wanted it to be and that by my deadline it was going to exist. It’s a bit like labour when you write like this; except you have an end point you know it has to be done by. Having had two babies it’s not necessarily as physically painful, but it’s just as draining and full of the ups and downs and lack of confidence and surges of power and happiness.
So on 12 February my new babe Emilia was born, and I had a first draft I could send to them with an email full of ‘I know that it’s still pretty sketchy in parts and I’ve not fleshed the second half out enough but it’s a start’ kind of sentences. It’s always terrifying sending first drafts, mostly because of the massive silence you have for a short while after, as you wait for people to read it. Thankfully Nicole, Michelle and the Globe’s Literary Manager, Jessica Lusk, powered through it pretty quickly and sent me their notes straight away. Thankfully it wasn’t the disaster I had convinced myself it was and even more thankfully they were very enthusiastic.
Now onto the hard bit. Redrafting…
Words: Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
It’s the news you’ve long been waiting for. We are thrilled to announce who is playing who in Hamlet and As You Like It, the opening shows of Michelle Terry’s first season as Artistic Director.
Find out more about Hamlet and As You Like It.
Catrin Aaron plays Horatio in Hamlet and Phoebe in As You Like It.
James Garnon plays Claudius in Hamlet and Audrey in As You Like It.
Colin Hurley plays the Ghost in Hamlet and Touchstone in As You Like It.
Bettrys Jones plays Laertes in Hamlet and Orlando in As You Like It.
Richard Katz plays Polonius in Hamlet and Silvius in As You Like It.
Jack Laskey plays Fortinbras and others in Hamlet and Rosalind in As You Like It.
Nadia Nadarajah plays Guildenstern in Hamlet and Celia in As You Like It.
Pearce Quigley plays Rosencrantz in Hamlet and Jaques in As You Like It.
Shubham Saraf plays Ophelia in Hamlet and Oliver in As You Like It.
Helen Schlesinger plays Gertrude in Hamlet and Duke Frederick in As You Like It.
Michelle Terry plays the title role in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It.
Tanika Yearwood plays Marcellus in Hamlet and Amiens in As You Like It.
The 2018 #GlobeEnsemble who will perform Hamlet and As You Like It are rehearsing and putting the plays together in a way unlike many of our Globe companies.
Everyone is equally involved in the process including the designer, composer, choreographer, actors, and directors and the rehearsal space is being treated like a ‘test tube’ of experimentation.
All the production choices, and what you will eventually see on stage, will spring from what happens in the rehearsal room. Ideas will be posed and explored, grown and altered. Some may fall by the wayside and some may make their way onto the stage, even if only in essence.
Read our previous blog post about the Hamlet and As You Like It rehearsal process.
Ellan Parry the designer has shared some of the rehearsal sketches.
Starting with a blank page meant that I needed to be in the rehearsal room as much as possible, observing and responding to the work the acting members of the ensemble were doing. Drawing is a useful mechanism for this kind of responding – a more meditative, more instinctive, less analytical way of channelling the imagery, the action, and a kind of distilled essence of what the actors are showing me. Looking back over these drawings from the past months, I’m struck by how much of this imagery, and this essence, in some cases from our very earliest sessions when we were just beginning to scratch below the surface of these plays, has found its way into what we’re about to put on stage.
How long is forever? When the imprisoned Palamon and Arcite vow eternal friendship, they don’t expect that anything will come between them. But then from their cell window they see the beautiful Emilia, and their priorities take a sudden and violent turn. In this late romance, Fletcher and Shakespeare examine love in all its fluid and complex forms.
Moyo Akandé - Hippolyta
Jude Akuwudike - Theseus
Andy Cryer - Jailer
Sue Devaney - First Queen
Bryan Dick - Arcite
Matt Henry - Pirithous
Melissa James - Second Queen
Francesca Mills - Jailer’s Daughter
Kat Rose-Martin - Third Queen
Paul Stocker - Palamon
Ellora Torchia - Emilia
Jon Trenchard - Wooer
Jos Vantyler - Schoolmaster
Find out more about Two Noble Kinsmen.
For the past six months, I’ve been working as a post-doctoral research fellow here at Shakespeare’s Globe. My job has been to collect data and record information about over 200 Renaissance plays which have been staged by the Globe’s long-running Read Not Deadproject, and in this series of blog posts, I’ll be telling you a bit more about what I’ve been up to.
Since 1995, Shakespeare’s Globe has been on a mission to produce rehearsed readings of all the plays which survive from between 1567 and 1642 – some 500 or so dramas which, for the most part, are no longer staged. Of course, far more plays were written and performed during that time – around 3,000 – but most haven’t come down to us: either they weren’t printed and the original manuscripts were lost, or they were printed and those printings haven’t survived. Still, 500 plays are more than enough to be getting on with: the Read Not Dead project has been running for almost 23 years, and we’re only about halfway through!
For those of you who’ve never been to a Read Not Dead event, here’s what happens on the day. Our actors arrive on a Sunday morning and met with a director; they’ll have done no prior preparation for their roles, and they’ll be performing script-in-hand. The cast have 5 or 6 hours to get the play on its feet, decide on blocking, and perhaps choreograph any necessary swordfights. Then, at 4pm, the audience arrive and the play comes alive: the actors usually have only had the chance to go through the entire play once, so most of the time the performances are based on instinct and adrenaline.
Why do we do this? While I can’t speak for the initial reasons Read Not Dead began, here are my personal top five points as to why these events are brilliant.
1. We get to discover plays that aren’t being performed anywhere else
2. Some of these plays are real hidden gems. A play falling out of fashion in the seventeenth century isn’t necessarily an indicator of its quality, or of what it might have to say to a modern audience.
3. The ensemble work between the cast is astonishing. Seeing them put a play together in a single day is pretty exhilarating.
4. Some of our Read Not Dead alumni have gone on to some rather impressive things. People like Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Craig, Sally Hawkins, Michael Sheen… The list isn’t quite endless, but it’s pretty cool.
5. You get to be a smug theatre hipster, talking about plays few other people have heard of; and perhaps when some of our current Read Not Dead actors make it big, you’ll be able to boast that you saw them perform when they were up-and-coming.
So what’s my role in all of this? Well, we want the plays that we stage to be remembered for longer than a single afternoon. Some of these scripts are only just waking up again after a 400-years-long nap, and frankly, we’d like them to stick around a bit longer this time and get the oxygen of publicity that so many of Shakespeare’s plays are exposed to.
With this end in mind, Shakespeare’s Globe is setting up a Read Not Dead database. It will contain information on every single Read Not Dead play: who originally staged it, and where; when it was printed; where possible, who acted in it. It will also feature photographs, clips, and scripts from our own performances: all on a searchable database which, for the first time, blends Renaissance theatre history with its revival in modern day performance.
In my next post, I’ll be talking about the information I’ve been collecting and what it’s revealed about the theatre scene of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.But for now, why not book in for our next series of Read Not Dead plays? Starting in May, our new Censorship season will confront ideas about suppression and sedition featuring Renaissance plays which speak vividly to us even today.
Words: Dr Miranda Fay Thomas
My last blog talked about the Read Not Dead project, and how my six-month research fellowship at Shakespeare’s Globe aimed to collect information on the 200-plus Renaissance plays staged here since 1995. In this blog, I want to talk about the process of acquiring and sorting through all of this information.
For each play, I had to find out certain things: alternative titles, who it was written by, when it was first performed, its genre, which companies acted the play, where the plays were staged, and when (and how often) they were printed. These things may sound simple enough, but while some evidence certainly survives, it is patchy.
Sometimes we don’t know for sure which theatre a play was performed in, although we can speculate. Take Henry Porter’s Two Angry Women of Abingdon: we know for a fact that this was an Admiral’s Men play, as it tells us on the title page of the 1599 quarto that it was performed ‘by the right honorable the Earle of Nottingham, Lord High Admirall his servants’. The title page doesn’t specifically tell us where it was performed, but because it was an Admiral’s Men play we can infer that it was probably staged at their usual venue, The Rose. Probably. We have no reason not to think it wasn’t: is that evidence enough? For now, I’d say yes.
Sometimes we can’t even presume a theatre venue when we know the company who performed the play. For instance, the anonymous play A Warning for Fair Women was probably first performed between 1597 and 1599. We know it was acted by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, but as for its performance venue, well, it was most likely to be either The Theatre or the Curtain. Which one it actually was depends on whether the play was performed nearer the 1597 date or the later 1599 one. The Chamberlain’s Men moved to the Curtain in 1597, but given that we don’t know which month A Warning for Fair Women was performed, it could have been before the move (so, one of the last plays they performed at The Theatre), or one of the first plays performed at their new venue.
Another matter which reveals itself when looking at the available data for these plays is whether or not we can measure the popularity of certain plays. Who was writing the smash hits of the Renaissance stage, and how do we know? One indicator is certainly the number of recorded performances. Christopher Marlowe’s hugely successful play, The Jew of Malta, has 36 recorded performances in London (mostly at The Rose, with a couple at Newington Butts) between 1592 and 1596. Let’s compare this with Shakespeare’s tragedy, Othello: between 1604 and 1636, we only have records of eight individual performances of the play (a couple at the Globe or Blackfriars, and elsewhere at places such as Whitehall Palace, Hampton Court, and in Oxford). This isn’t to say that these are the only performances of Othello over a 30-year period: it’s simply the only ones we have records of. But it’s fair to say that Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta was vastly more successful.
However, the number of recorded performances isn’t the only means of establishing which plays were popular: we can also look at its printed history. Take the anonymous play Mucedorus. The only specific date we know it was performed was on 20 February 1610 at Whitehall Palace. The only other information we have is on the title page of its first printing, where we’re told it has been ‘sundry times played’ by 1598. So was it performed regularly? Maybe. The title page might possibly be inflating the play’s popularity to make it look attractive to potential readers. Either this technique worked, or it was in fact a much-loved and hugely popular play: it went through 16 different editions between 1598 and 1663, more than any other drama of the period.
Lastly, filtering through the performance archive of Read Not Dead allowed me to discover what is possibly my favourite fact about the entire project. On June 25, 1995, Read Not Dead staged John Fletcher’s play The Island Princess, which starred not only the Globe’s first artistic director, Mark Rylance (as Armusia, a noble and daring Portuguese gentleman), but Eastenders star and Cockney champion, Danny Dyer (as a soldier named Pedro). What I would give to have seen these two actors onstage together. But such is the wonder and the madness of Read Not Dead.
Words: Dr Miranda Fay Thomas
Delivered in partnership with King’s College London, our MA in Shakespeare Studies offers exciting and unparalleled opportunities for Shakespeare students. Drawing on the joint expertise of Shakespeare’s Globe and King’s, students learn about the texts, companies and theatre spaces of early modern playhouses, just a stone’s throw from where Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed.
In the first of a series of blog posts, current student Stephanie Donowho reflects on a magical night of discoveries (and dancing) on the Globe stage.
The first few weeks of the MA Shakespeare Program were a mixture of joyous discovery and growing anticipation. There are many things about the program that immediately excited us. Our classmates hailed from all over the world; I’m from the United States, and other people in my year come from Australia, Ireland, Norway, Canada, and India, just to name a few. Our professors, once intimidating and recognizable names from leading scholarship on the early modern period, were becoming familiar and encouraging advisors. Each week, we met for class at the Sackler studios just around the corner from the Globe theatre. One night, we would receive a lecture from an architect who worked on creating the Globe; another night, we’d get a hands-on experience with the Globe’s model of an early modern printing press. But we were all looking forward to the night in November (once the Globe’s summer season had ended) when we would be allowed to get up onto the Globe stage ourselves and explore this unique space.
Our first class on the Globe stage was a two hour block of independent study – there would be no faculty or staff on hand to guide or direct us. We were allowed to use the time however we wanted to get to know the space and put into practice all that we had learnt in our seminars and lectures. We sent eager messages back and forth, brainstorming how we wanted to spend these two hours. We wanted to do things as a whole group that took advantage of the full space of the stage, getting to know how it felt to move and speak in that theatre. We also wanted to learn something about how that experience may have taken shape in Shakespeare’s own time.
We landed on a seemingly simple activity: a cue script. In the early modern period, actors didn’t receive the full text of a play. (It would have taken a long time for someone to write out 14+ copies of a play by hand!) Instead, they learned their part from a cue script, which only contains the lines that they speak and the lines that come right before – their cues. What does a first rehearsal look like when each actor only has their own cue script, and no director is assigned to manage stage traffic? We decided to find out!
We created cue scripts for all of the characters in Act 3, Scene 1 of Julius Caesar– the scene where Caesar is stabbed by Brutus, Cassius, and the rest of the conspirators. Nearly everyone had a role to play, and the rest of us watched from the yard. We pieced through the scene like a puzzle, often starting and stopping as we discovered clues about the scene in other people’s lines. We experimented with the three main doors of the stage as we decided which characters needed to enter from different places. We snuck around the two large pillars ad used them to plot and hide. We discovered how the Globe’s stage could be used to create multiple simultaneous spaces and scenes, as clusters of conspirators emerged and alliances formed. For example, certain characters were not always supposed to hear what other characters were saying. When Brutus says,
Cassius, be constant:
Popilius Lena speaks not of our purposes;
For, look, he smiles, and Caesar doth not change.
Caesar and Popilius stood elsewhere on the stage, creating a separate imaginary space for themselves. We even experimented with putting the soothsayer up on the balcony, to get a feel for the different levels available to actors at the Globe.
By the end of the scene, we’d learned a lot about the process of putting a play together from a cue script and the possibilities of performance on the Globe stage. We all felt a bit more comfortable in this special space, and ready to use this hands-on knowledge to active our academic imagination about early modern performance practices.
We also had quite a bit of time left, and hadn’t prepared anything else. After a quick fit of brainstorming – what was another early modern staging practice that we could use this unique space to understand? – we landed on something we thought we’d enjoy. A jig!
Or something like one, anyway. I used my rudimentary knowledge of the famous Footloose dance to assemble a team of dancers. What would it feel like to dance in a group on this stage? How much space would we each have, and how might that movement interact with the theatre as a whole?
Over the next few months, we would have many more hours on (and behind, and below) the Globe stage, as we came to know the inner workings and storied history of the theatre. I’m incredibly grateful for the access this program has given to me and my classmates, and I will always treasure those joyful moments from our first night on the stage and the freedom we had to play at Shakespeare’s Globe.
We are currently working on improvements to our ticketing system.
Over the coming weeks you will be asked to update your account details.
Please note that our Box Office counter, phone line and online ticketing website will be closed and unavailable from 6pm on Saturday 21 April to 10am on Wednesday 25 April 2018, due to these upgrades.
Check back for further announcements on our blog and social media channels.
Delivered in partnership with King’s College London, our MA in Shakespeare Studies offers exciting and unparalleled opportunities for Shakespeare students. Drawing on the joint expertise of Shakespeare’s Globe and King’s, students learn about the texts, companies and theatre spaces of early modern playhouses, just a stone’s throw from where Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed.
Amy Victoria Norris considers the Globe audience and their relationship with the actors on stage.
It’s been all change in these parts over the past few months. We’ve started a new term here on the MA, which means a whole new module at the Globe, and in our first plenary session of the month, actor and Globe Education Faculty member acting practitioner Dickon Tyrrell told us about sitting in the upper gallery as the strobe lighting was taken down to mark Shakespeare’s Globe transition into a new phase of artistic direction.
Acting on the Globe stage is, as the Globe’s Cause, a ‘radical theatrical experiment’, which we explored ourselves in our first plenary session of the month, entitled ‘Playing with the Globe audience’. We worked with Dickon to workshop what is different about being an actor on the Globe stage, specifically thinking about how to engage with your audience. An actor is so connected to their audience, in the shared light of the Globe Theatre theatre, that it becomes a reciprocal relationship; you are acting in the space of the audience, playing off their reactions at times. What stuck out to me what Dickon’s warning that an actor knows their audience has lost interest when they start swaying; he recalls noticing that the groundlings start to almost move in synchronicity from side to side when an actor has lost their focus.
This idea of the Globe audience, all moving together as waves in a sea, is interesting for our study this term; our new term at the Globe has brought with it our new favourite linguistic term… phenomenology. Try saying that three times fast(!) Historical Phenomenology encourages a study of early modern performance that takes into account what it would have been ‘felt’ like to experience theatre in context. For our purpose, this means considering what it was like to be an Early Modern audience. Therefore, it is integral to this term’s module at the Globe: ‘Staging Shakespeare in Early Modern Playhouses’.
Particularly interesting to us has been the early modern idea of ‘contagion’ in a theatrical environment; Shakespeare’s audiences would have believed they could be literally infected by the actions of the stage. Allison Hobgood uses the example of Macbeth to explore how attending a performance would put an audience member at risk of catching the kind of fear played out onstage, which could affect the balance of your humours and cause embodied illness. The permeability of one’s skin, especially when all cramped together as groundlings, means that not only could physical ailments like the plague spread quickly, so could emotions and sins performed onstage which could be literally infectious. Both the physical and the emotional contagions move through the crowd like Dickon’s wave simile. The Globe, whether it’s the first or third space of that name, demands a connected audience.
We also got a chance to be a part of the audience ourselves three times this month, firstly to see the Rutgers’ Conservatory performances of both Richard III and 1 Henry IV. Being an MA student here is to be a part of the Globe Education family, and we were all thrilled to be invited to see the work of BFA and MFA Acting majors from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, University in New Jersey, who have spent their junior year training here.
We returned to the theatre as groundlings again to see the Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank production of Much Ado About Nothing, a 90-minute fast-paced performance of one of my favourite plays. These performances are a great way to see some super high-energy Shakespeare; I fear we MA students were maybe approaching on as raucous as we imagine early modern playgoers to have been!
This performance was a finale to my highlight of the month; the Globe’s inaugural postgraduate conference, organised with London Shakespeare Centre. We were lucky enough to have the call-for-papers extended to not only doctoral but also MA students, and I therefore had the chance to present a snippet of my early dissertation research, and get some really helpful feedback and pointers. From the very first day of my course, I have felt encouraged and accepted as part of a larger academic community as Masters student here. The bodies you’ll interact with as a postgrad at King’s and the Globe accept that you have a valuable voice as an MA student, and encourage you to contribute to the larger academic conversation. It’s really a community like no other.
We ended the month with the Globe in snow (the ‘Snow-Globe’, if you please), I took a quick break from my Tuesday afternoon volunteering session in the Globe’s archives to have a small-scale photo shoot and snowball fight on the roof terrace overlooking the theatre whilst the cast continued with a show of Much Ado. Even as everything around us in London ground to a halt like we’d never seen snow before, the show must go on!
Further Reading on Phenomenology:
Bruce Smith, Phenomenal Shakespeare (Wiley Blackwell)
Allison Hobgood, Passionate Playgoing in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Katherine Craik and Tanya Pollard (eds) Shakespearean Sensations: Experiencing Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
In Shakespeare’s day the choice of which play will be performed was made by the most powerful person of the household. In keeping with that tradition we are putting the power in the hands of you, our audience.
This summer, in a first for Shakespeare’s Globe, we are giving you the chance to vote for the play you’d like to see on the night. The plays you could be watching are: The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew or Twelfth Night.
How does it work
During the pre-show you will be asked to make your choice. Once the collective decision has been made, the performance will start straight away.
This does mean that if you book more than one ‘voter’s choice’ performance you may see the same play twice if the audience votes the same way both times.
Got a favourite of the three plays? Why not persuade your friends on social media to vote for it by using the hashtags: #TwelfthNight, #TheTamingoftheShrew, #TheMerchantofVenice.
Fixed Performances and Voter’s choice On Tour
Cast your vote at venues around the UK and Europe.
Shakespeare’s Globe, London
Monday 7 May, 7.30pm Twelfth Night
Tuesday 8 May, 2.00pm Twelfth Night
Thursday 10 May, 7.30pm Twelfth Night
Friday 11 May, 2.00pm The Taming of The Shrew
Sunday 13 May, 1.00pm & 6.30pm The Taming of The Shrew
Monday 14 May, 7.30pm The Merchant of Venice
Tuesday 15 May, 2.00pm The Merchant of Venice
Wednesday 16 May, 7.30pm The Merchant of Venice
Friday 18 May, 2.00pm & 7.30pm Voter’s Choice
Chilham Castle, Kent
Friday 25 May, 7.00pm - The Merchant of Venice
Saturday 26 May, 2.00pm - Twelfth Night | 7.00pm - The Taming of the Shrew
Sunday 27 May 2018, 1.00pm –voter’s choice& 6.00pm – Twelfth Night
Pontio Arts Centre, Bangor
Thursday 7 – Saturday 9 June
All voter’s choice
Campos Eliseos Theater, Bilbao, Spain
Wednesday 13 – Thursday 14 June
All voter’s choice
Auditorio Niemeyer, Avilés, Spain
Saturday 16 June
All voter’s choice
Teatros del Canal, Madrid, Spain
Tuesday 19 – Thursday 21 June
All voter’s choice
Shakespeare Festival, Neuss, Germany
Monday 25 – Tuesday 26 June
All voter’s choice
Art Carnuntum, Austria
Friday 29-Jun, 7pm, The Merchant of Venice
Saturday 30-Jun, 7pm, Voter’s Choice 2pm & 7pm The Taming of The Shrew
Sunday 01-Jul, 7pm Twelfth Night
Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, North Yorkshire
Thursday 5 – Sunday 8 July
All voter’s choice
Brighton Open Air Theatre, Brighton
Wednesday 11 - Saturday 14 July
All voter’s choice
Bodleian Library Quad, Oxford
Monday 16 – Sunday 29 July
All voter’s choice
Doddington Hall, Lincoln
Tuesday 7 August, 6pm, The Merchant of Venice
Wednesday 8 August, 1pm, Twelfth Night & 6pm, The Taming of The Shrew
Alnwick Playhouse, Alnwick
Saturday 11 - Sunday 12 August
All voter’s choice
Ystad Theater, Sweden
Thursday 16 August, 7pm, The Merchant of Venice
Friday 17 August, 7pm, The Taming of The Shrew
Saturday 18 August 3pm, Twelfth Night & 7pm Voter’s Choice
Shakespeare’s Globe, London
Thursday 6 September, 2.00pm, Twelfth Night
Friday 7 September, 7.30pm
Saturday 8 September, 2.00pm The Merchant of Venice
As of 24 April 2018, we have a brand new ticketing system. We understand that you may have some questions about the new system and how it works.
Below are some FAQs that give you more information about the new system and answer some common queries. Please ensure you have watched our step by step video guides below that will guide you through the new system.
Why do I need to reset my password?
As of 25 April 2018, we have a brand new ticketing system. Any previous passwords you have are from our old system are now invalid and therefore need to be reset.
Why do you have a new ticketing system?
In order to improve your online ticket-buying experience, we have a new and improved ticketing system that will manage all bookings to productions, workshops, events and more, as well as manage membership and donations.
Is this because you have a new website?
Our full new website is currently under construction and will be launched later in 2018. The changes today will only affect the ticketing pages of our site.
So how do I access my new account, what do I need to do?
Creating a new account is simple, but we’ve created a step-by-step video guide if you need any assistance.
What can I do with my account?
Once logged in, you can buy tickets, become a Member, donate and update your communication preferences and contact details.
I am a completely new user, I have never used the ticketing website before.
If you are new to the ticketing site, please register for a brand new account, you do not need to “reset your password”.
Do I have to create an account?
In order to buy tickets online you need to create an online account, yes. If you have opted to receive marketing emails from us, you can also use your online account to update your communication preferences or unsubscribe.
What happens if I have already bought tickets for an event that hasn’t taken place yet? Did my tickets transfer over?
Yes, providing you use the same email address. You should be able to see your upcoming bookings once logged-in to your account. If, for any reason, you can’t see these, please contact the Box Office and we will look into this for you.
I no longer want to receive any emails from you - can you remove me from your email list?
You can log in to your online account to update your contact preferences. You can also unsubscribe from Shakespeare’s Globe emails at any time with one click using the link at the bottom of our emails. In rare circumstances, we may need to contact you with important urgent information about a booking (e.g. cancelled performances) and we will send these updates even if you have unsubscribed from marketing emails. If you have any questions or would like to contact us about unsubscribing please email enews@shakespearesglobe.com
I want to update my contact preferences - how do I do this?
You can update your contact preferences by logging in to your account. You can also unsubscribe from Shakespeare’s Globe emails at any time with one click using the link at the bottom of our emails.
How do you store and use my data?
How we treat your data and online privacy is very important to us. Read our new public privacy policy.
I’m a Member, how will this new system affect my membership and priority booking?
If you are a Member and have booked online previously, then you will have an existing online account. In order to be able to access this account again and take full advantage of your priority booking rights, please reset your account password here. You will no longer need any membership number in order to buy tickets for the next priority booking period. Please ensure that you update your password ahead of the next members’ priority booking period later this summer to make sure that you have a smooth booking experience on our new system and to enjoy your members’ exclusive booking period.
I am not a member yet but I would like to be.
You can purchase membership in your account once you have logged-in.
I’ve been trying to book tickets all weekend and am having difficulties.
Our Box Office will be closed from Saturday 21 April 5pm and will re-open on Wednesday 25 April and you will now need to reset the password for your online account in order to buy tickets.
How will this new system change booking for new seasons in the future? When is the next season going to be announced?
Our new system will ensure a smooth priority booking and general booking experience for both members and non-members. The 2018/19 Sam Wanamaker Playhouse Winter Season and booking dates will be announced this Summer.
I have already joined the access scheme. Will I need to reapply and will I receive the same benefits?
If you are already on the Access scheme then you will continue to receive the same benefits and there is no need to reapply. However, as this is a new ticketing system, you will need to reset your password to login. In doing so, you will be able to book your access tickets online.
I don’t have an online account as I always book in person, via telephone or via booking form (members) - do I still have to create one?
No, you do not need to create an online account if you wish to continue to book over the phone or in person. Your details have been transferred to our new booking system, as well as any future tickets you may have booked for the Summer season.
Members - you will still be able to take advantage of your priority booking membership benefits by sending in your priority booking form, as with previous season bookings. However, if you have not booked online before then this new system is a great opportunity to create a new account and to try priority booking online for the first time. Booking online means that you will have quicker access to tickets and you can choose your own seats.
How does this change how I book my access tickets?
Members of our Access scheme can continue to book tickets in the usual way, read more here. We will be updating this blog with details on improvements to access booking in the coming weeks. We will also be contacting everyone on our Access database with further information.
I’m having difficulty accessing my new account, how can I contact you for assistance?
We’ve published a blog today which should assist you in accessing your new account. Try following the step-by-step video guide. If you are still encountering difficulties, please contact the Box Office on tickets@shakespearesglobe.com or call +44 (0)20 7401 9919.
If you’re booking tickets for Shakespeare’s Globe in the next few months you will notice some changes. This is part of an ongoing project to improve the booking and online experience for you, our audiences, visitors and participants.
One of the biggest changes we are making is to implement a new ticketing and customer database system: Tessitura, which will form the base for future improvements.
If you’ve booked with us before, your previous account will have been transferred over, but you will need to reset your password to login. This blog provides a step-by-step guide of how to reactivate your account or create a new account.
Previously purchased tickets online with Shakespeare’s Globe?
Watch this video to find out how you can reactivate your account and continue to purchase tickets and update your preferences.
New to Shakespeare’s Globe?
You can easily create a new account to purchase tickets, programmes and memberships and manage how you’d like to hear from us.
What do you think?
We would like to hear what you think about these changes, so we can make further improvements. We will continually be working to perfect your booking experience across the site and learn from the feedback you provide. If you have any comments or any questions, please do contact us at info@shakespearesglobe.com
We are pleased the new system will deliver an ever-growing number of benefits, including, but not limited to those below.
In this new blog series Fight Director Yarit Dor will reveal how she works with actors to make fight scenes look realistic, whilst keeping everyone safe.
Hi, I’m Yarit and I’m part of the Globe Ensemble (performing Hamlet and As You Like It) as Fight Director. I wanted to share some of my process on Hamlet and As You Like It this season.
With the Globe Ensemble our mutual aim was to discover EVERYTHING in the rehearsal room. The actors inspire the work and decisions can be made as a collective therefore I decided to be there everyday rather than only coming in for fight sessions. That allowed me to be present in the full development and to be there when the actors explore scenes that have or might have violent interactions. Similar to Ellan (designer) who sketched in their notebook, I started to write down things that I saw: any physical impulses that they had, spatial pathways they were naturally using, games; props they were taking from the pile etc. That taught me a lot about how they view their character’s journey in that scene and why they need to use violence.
I snuck away at different points during the day and went into an empty room where I started brainstorming ideas on huge Post-It notes.
Hamlet’s fight brainstorming
Michelle, Bettrys, Ellan and I had a session of brainstorming where we chatted about the graveyard scene and the last fencing scene. We all wrote some words on a big Post-It and discussed the storytelling behind the action.
Since the rehearsals were done in the order of the play, we would get to the fencing scene much later so it was essential for me to start teaching them a choreography that leaves space for the actresses to explore events, emotions and intent. Hearing them speak and analyse their character’s journey gave a direction for the action. Then after the rehearsal day I’d meet my Assistant, share thoughts with him and start to tailor moves.
As You Like It fight brainstorming
Our fight sessions happened much later in the process. Since the two main fights in the play are right in the first Act, I had a chance to see them playing with those scenes a couple of times. Also by the time we had our first fight session we’ve already worked through most of the play so I knew what kind of movement language overall was beginning to form itself - puppetry, animal work etc. Therefore when Richard, Bettrys and I had our brainstorming session we all knew what style of language is required. In that session Richard came up with the ending and then we constructed it from end to start in theory and agreed on the storytelling of the fight. With Shubham and Bettrys we played some physical games and they shared stories of how they used to fight with their siblings so we used some of those concepts in the Orlando verses Oliver fight.
Words: Yarit Dor
Words: Kim Gilchrist
As I write this, I’m two weeks past my viva – the meeting where a student is required to defend their completed PhD thesis, answering questions posed by two senior academics. Happily, I now get to call myself Doctor Gilchrist.
It’s been a long process, an adventure, from Shakespeare enthusiast to doctor of early modern drama. And the journey started, academically at least, with an application form to KCL and Shakespeare’s Globe MA in Shakespeare Studies.
I have a BA, and general background, in theatre studies. I had worked on a number of productions of Shakespeare’s plays over the years, in a role we called co-directing but which would probably now be called dramaturgy – I filled gaps that needed filling: talked to the actors one-on-one, composed songs for our folk-rock wayward sisters in Macbeth, researched the plays, read all the Arden footnotes etc. I wrote a play of my own, Forgiving Shakespeare, a comedy in verse about Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Cervantes, and Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith. I read books, and books, and books, about Shakespeare. But I’d never thought I could “do” Shakespeare for a living.
For some reason, around the end of 2011 it all fell together and I realised I spent more time reading and thinking about Shakespeare and his world than almost anything else. Without realising, I’d stumbled on the thing I was meant to be doing. Back to that application form.
The KCL and Shakespeare’s Globe MA in Shakespeare Studies runs, at the King’s College London end, from the English department. As such, I was an unusual candidate – out of further education for many, many, years, and with no English literature experience since my A-levels. Yet I soon found, in a good way, that a grounding in English Literature offered only partial preparation for the MA. For those used to studying Shakespeare and early modern drama only on the page, only as a kind of refined form of novel – reading the characters for psychological dimensions, arguing about motive and metaphor – the MA could be a shock.
There were classes on textiles and costume, the most valuable properties owned by any early modern playing company or theatre owner; sessions on music, and make-up – Globe Education’s Farah Karim-Cooper has literally written the book on cosmetics in early modern drama: I remember the reverent hush the day we passed a pot of shimmering pearl powder around the class; we learned about the strange acoustics of playhouses, the economics of touring, the poetry of doubling, how the person sitting on the throne of England determined what did, and didn’t, get played; we learned about the cultural pressures that caused, shaped, and sustained Shakespeare’s plays, pressures that are often left invisible by more traditional teaching methods.
Central to the MA was its location – within the Globe complex itself.
There was always a sense of practical activity, of theatre at work –crowds audible as we walked to class, costumed actors swooping past, props under construction in the car park. This helped the theories, the history we were learning feel less abstract. We could study theories of bare-stage, open-air performance, and then see theory put into practice from the pit of the theatre itself. Was Henry VI different when performed over ten hours in torrential rain? It was. It was.
Meanwhile, through the modules offered on the KCL campus, the culture of the Elizabethan-Jacobean world was uncovered. Just as Shakespeare’s Globe afforded greater understanding of the material pressures and conditions of theatre and performance, at KCL we learned about the production, economies, and peculiarities of playbooks, those ephemeral, fragile, largely disposable little volumes without which we would have no access to the texts of early modern drama. Who printed these books, once the players were done with their scripts? Who bought them? How much did they cost? Why were so many hundreds of plays printed? Why were so many thousands of plays never printed?
When I started teaching early modern drama at my current university, Roehampton, I took some students on a tour of the Globe. They were able to see the Sam Wannamaker Playhouse, a version of the kind of space in which, for example, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi was first performed. We then crossed the river via Blackfriars Bridge to the churchyard of St Paul’s Cathedral, once the centre of the London book trade. We stood on the spot where, once it had been published, The Duchess of Malfi was first put up for sale by a bookseller called John Waterson from his wooden stall.
From the Globe, we were able to retrace the footsteps, and the lifecycle, of a single play and its customers, from stage to stall. On this theme, if you want to read more about what I learned, I adapted my MA dissertation on the play Mucedorus– the most frequently published play of the early modern era – into an article that was published last year by the journal Shakespeare.
Beyond the formal parameters of the course itself, there were constant opportunities to participate in and observe events put on by Globe Education. Of particular impact for me was Read Not Dead, the regular stagings of little-or-never-performed early modern plays put on by skilled actors with a single morning’s rehearsal. It opened my eyes to strange and beautiful plays I would never otherwise have been able to see; it provided valuable insight into how plays work in performance – a play that may have been dismissed by literature scholars as unpoetic or crude can reveal subtleties and depth of artistry when spoken and acted aloud.
Finally, there are Globe Education’s internships – open only to MA students when I was there, now open to applications across the UK. I was lucky enough to get a placement, and even luckier that this coincided with the opening of the SWP. I filled a bulging folder full with articles and research for the director of the SWP’s inaugural production, The Duchess of Malfi and then, like all dramaturgs and researchers will do, I scrutinised the final production to see if my research had had any influence.
To learn at Shakespeare’s Globe was also to conduct research, watch plays for fun, and make long-sustained personal and professional friendships that have enriched my life and career ever since. It was, and is, a dynamic, forward-thinking, challenging and experimental institution. I learned a lot.
Photo: Pete Le May
