The great Globe itself

Michelle Terry has announced the new Globe season!  It's radical in a very different way from Emma Rice's egotistical chaos.
She wants a collaborative, actor-driven theatre: not entirely unlike Shakespeare's own directorless company. (Of course, Shakespeare's original roles were written for certain men and boys, but revivals and plays by others may well have been cast by discussion.)

Terry "said there was too much pressure on a director to 'solve the plays … Actors are amazing dramaturgs. They will tell you about what works in a play.'

Terry said she wanted to dismantle hierarchies. 'It is unfair that everything gets dumped on the director’s shoulders and actually it is a really collaborative process, especially for our theatre, which is one of the most democratic and egalitarian spaces that we’ve got.'

"The first two plays will be presented by a Globe ensemble of 12 actors, two co-directors and one designer. The ensemble will decide who plays, for example, Hamlet or Rosalind."

We shall see if they can make it work.

And after Rice's tearing up the place for goes-up-to-eleven lightshows, I love Terry's respect for the space:

"Terry said she had chosen Hamlet and As You Like It because they were both written around 1599, the year the original Globe was built, and were conceived with its architecture in mind."

Nine