Thank you for visiting our archive. Each performance submitted to our website will be explained in detail in its own blog post. You can choose to look through these posts in a variety of ways.
A takeover of Battersea’s Gallery on the Corner - combining live performance with installation art - to tell the story of Shakespeare’s infamous She-Wolf of France. The text is pieced together from the War of the Roses tetralogy, with some additional new writing.
Read MoreGlenda Jackson takes on the role of King Lear in this much-awaited production of the tragedy at London’s Old Vic. It comes 25 years after Jackson’s decision to give up acting for politics.
Read MoreLear has dementia. His children never visit him. He forbids it, ever since they betrayed him and he disowned them many years ago. So what happens when Cordelia - his youngest, whose betrayal was the greatest - knocks on his door? Why has she come back? What's her story? And is there any chance of reconciliation?
Lear/Cordelia is an experimental double-bill: a radical reworking of Shakespeare's King Lear followed by Cordelia, a new play from the perspective of Lear's youngest daughter.
Digital projection-mapping combines with Shakespeare and new writing to open up the emotional landscapes of a man with dementia and the woman who tries to reconnect with him.
Lear/Cordelia pilot production is based on our research-and-development project that explored King Lear in the context of dementia through participatory research.
Read MoreBedouin Shakespeare Company’s production of The Tempest aims to make Shakespeare’s play accessible and entertaining to an audience largely composed of students. The production, characterized by spare staging, emphasized the comic and magical dimensions of The Tempest, the third Shakespeare production the company has brought to the UAE since 2012.
Read MoreCole Porter's popular Kiss Me Kate, a musical based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew was part of the Welsh National Opera's autumn Shakespeare400 Season. WNO Artistic Director David Pountney said ‘It's a marvellous opportunity for us to bring together enormously varied works which Shakespeare’s works have inspired.’
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An epic double family drama about mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. In Willmott’s production Lear, a Queen with failing mental faculties, finds it impossible to retire gracefully and is cast out by her eldest daughters. Meanwhile the Duke of Gloucester's ruthless son plots to steal his brother's inheritance.
Read MoreThe UK Premiere of pianist and composer André Tchaikowsky's opera based on Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. The opera is a potent attack on prejudice, a deeply personal response to Tchaikowsky's experiences as a child in the Warsaw Ghetto, that was unperformed for three decades before David Pountney commissioned performances at the Bregenz Festival in Austria. The Welsh National Opera production was part of the Welsh National Opera's autumn Shakespeare400 Season. WNO Artistic Director Pountney said “It's a marvellous opportunity for us to bring together enormously varied works which Shakespeare’s works have inspired.”
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Billed as Britain's first all-black Hamlet, Black Theatre Live's production was set in Denmark, a Black Empire of modern England, where an intelligent young student discovers the world he once knew has crumbled. Dramaturg Mark Norfolk used Peter Brook's stripped back Hamlet as his textual blueprint to get to the heart of the play, expanding it with new text to better explore both Hamlet and the play's female characters.
Read MoreVerdi described Macbeth as 'one of mankind's greatest creations'. His opera based on the play was part of the Welsh National Opera's autumn Shakespeare400 Season. WNO Artistic Director David Pountney said ‘It's a marvellous opportunity for us to bring together enormously varied works which Shakespeare’s works have inspired.’
Read More“Breaking… Shakespeare's alive! First ever interview. If Shakespeare were living and writing today, who would he be? A genius, an outsider, or just plain Bill? The Bard is very much alive and kicking, Hamlet's just opened (to mixed reviews!) and Will’s in the hot seat. Finally, we ask the questions that have kept us all guessing: Are these plays really his? Why the tragedies? What happened with Anne? Second guest: Sir Francis Bacon, Shakespeare's arch-rival. To be or not to be…? The answer’s not on Google. Festival premiere after hit run down under! 'Fantastic!' (James Valentine, ABC Sydney).” (description from the Fringe Programme)
Read More“Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition! MCS Drama presents a brand new adaptation of King John, one of the least performed but most politically cutting and gravely comic of Shakespeare's history plays.” --description from Fringe programme. The performance was an abridged version of Shakespeare's play, and was also performed at Magdalen College School, Oxford.
Read More“King Lear has ruled for many years. As age begins to overtake him, he decides to divide his kingdom amongst his children, living out his days without the burden of power.
A proud man, he allows vanity to cloud his judgment, believing that he can relinquish the crown, but enjoy the same authority and respect he has always known. Misjudging his children’s loyalty he soon finds himself stripped of all the trappings of state, wealth and power he had taken for granted. Alone in the wilderness he is left to confront the mistakes of a life that has brought him to this point."
Read More“Three sisters meet to enact Macbeth's fate. Their twisted prophecies transform him from a war hero into a paranoid tyrant in this brutal Shakespearean tragedy, set to the beat of Hecate's drum.”--description from Fringe Programme
Read More“From award-winning director Nicholas Barter comes a 1920s Chinese inspired version of Shakespeare’s much loved comedy performed by the Shanghai Theatre Academy. This production is a must-see and will reinvigorate one of Shakespeare’s best plays with traditional Chinese elements, including stunning colourful Chinese costumes and classical music played on the vertical bamboo flute.” --description from Fringe programme
Part of the official programme commemorating the 400th year anniversary of the deaths of Tang Xianzu and William Shakespeare.
In a prison that looks very much like Hell, suspended in space and time, Othello is bound to endlessly atone for the murder of Desdemona. Delirious and obsessed, he becomes one with his nemesis, Iago. Othello's Guilt paints a dystopian picture of jealousy, personal anguish and self-destruction, using exclusively Shakespeare's words.
Roberto Cavosi's new adaptation highlights the relationship between good and evil - themes which inhabit us all. Cavosi’s work absorbs and transforms the psychological intensity at the heart of modern and contemporary theatre, from Pirandello to Beckett. With Othello’s Guilt, the company wishes to reach a multicultural audience who are willing to be challenged by an original and innovatory approach to Shakespeare.
After its premiere (in Italian) at the Teatro Antico in Segesta (Sicily) in August, this 55 minute monologue marks the return to The Rose of actor Marco Gambino, who has recently received international acclaim after appearing in popular Italian television series Squadra Antimafia and Young Montalbano.
Read More“After Banquo's murder, his son Fleance is adrift in Macbeth's brutal new Scotland. He/the audience are taken under the wing of a strange woman from the heath. Interactive, audio-immersive show.” --description from Fringe programme.
Blood Will Have Blood was an audio-immersive companion to the company's 2015 show Fire Burn: The Tragedy of Macbeth which returned to the Fringe in 2016 and played in rep.
Read More“A cast of two attempt to answer one of theatre's greatest questions: Who was Hamlet? A grieving Horatio tries to unlock the mystery of his friend's devastating death by hiring an actor to tell his story.” --description from the Fringe Programme
Read More“No one will remember me; only killing makes history.' Enclosed in her chamber with her Confessor and her trusted Nurse, the Queen faces the ordeal of giving birth to the King's longed-for son and heir. Moving between reality and delirium, she fears for the survival of her child as she reveals the hidden story behind Lear and his ambitions. An intensely lyrical imagining of the untold story behind Lear's forgotten Queen. A powerful drama from Ronnie Dorsey, writer of A Fine Line and Of Sound Mind.” --description from AssemblyFestival.com
Read More“Music. Ambition. Greed. Murder. Shakespeare meets Channel 4's smash-hit Empire! A musical adaptation with an R 'n' B, grime, and afrobeat vibe set within the British music industry. Performed and created by young Hackney artists” --description from Fringe programme.
Read More“Shit-Faced Shakespeare is the deeply highbrow fusion of an entirely serious Shakespeare play with an entirely shit-faced cast member. Side-splitting, raucous and completely interactive, the show has been running since 2010 and has already entertained over 30,000 eager theatre goers across the UK. With a genuinely drunken professional actor selected at random every night, no two shows are ever the same and audiences can even dictate when the actor gets to drink more to prevent unwanted sobriety. Shit-Faced Shakespeare seeks to introduce a new generation of theatre-goers to the works of the Bard by reviving the raucous, interactive and vibrant nature of Elizabethan theatre with a very modern twist - reminding them as we go to always enjoy Shakespeare responsibly.” --description from company website
The play selected for the Shit-Faced treatment in 2016 was Measure for Measure.
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
