Voices in the Dark in rehearsal.
The team behind the Young Muslim Voices project believe in the power of sharing and telling peoples stories to challenge perceptions, to promote a community of diversity, and to remind us that we are united by more than divides us.
At The Globe our cause is to “celebrate Shakespeare’s transformative impact on the world…”
Voices In The Dark is our chance to question that cause. Does Shakespeare really have a transformative impact on the world? And if he does, whose world is he impacting on?
This questioning led us to two organisations: Intermission and Voices, organisations who are using the power of language, story and performance to try to transform our world for the better.
Voices is a social start-up which aims to creatively challenge perceptions through the sharing and telling of people’s stories. The stories you will hear tonight are all monologues that have been written anonymously (if they so wish) by young Muslims in the UK and tonight they will be performed by professional actors for the first time.
Intermission Youth Theatre is a charity giving young people the tools to make positive choices, to become the best version of themselves through theatre. Using Shakespeare as inspiration, they reimagine his language to tell stories and create their own contemporary interpretations.
Working with these organisations we partnered their scenes and monologues with some of Shakespeare’s own stories to see if we could get any closer to answering our question.
Voices in the Dark is a night of poetry, personal stories, and performance; a call and response from now to then, spanning 400 years of storytelling.
Michelle Terry is the Artistic Director of the Globe.
Photography: Pete Le May