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.
Trevor Nunn's banghra-infused, 1930s British Raj-set production of A Midsummer Night's Dream saw him return to his home town and the theatre of which he laid the foundation stone to complete his goal of directing every Shakespeare play. The production also marked the New Wolsey Theatre's 15th anniversary and featured local schoolchildren as fairies.
Read More“George Crocker is keen to liven up his dull life so he decides to join the village Drama Club. What happens then turns his world upside down. Set during the Second World War this nostalgic, funny and moving story will appeal to all. It is a vivid portrait of village life with all seventeen colourful characters played by one man.”
The Jack Studio Theatre is a space for companies to explore. They also boast their own in-house team, and have received multiple Off West End Nominations, including productions of Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar. Mark Carey has been touring with Into The Breach since 2013; it is an exciting addition to the theatre's repertoire.
Since the Our Theatre project began in 1997, over 5000 Southwark students have performed at the Globe. This year, ten different schools came together in a performance of Richard III.
Read MoreA new, London production of the off-Broadway hit The Donkey Show clashed Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream with retro disco in this production in which interactive promenade theatre met a late-1970s dance party.
Read More“Award-winning Sudden Impulse Theatre Company make their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with Shakespeare's classic comedy, celebrating 400 years since the death of the Bard. Enjoy this much-loved comedy, performed outside in the gardens at Greenside.” --description from Fringe Programme)
Read MoreThis site-specific promenade production of Macbeth took part in the atmospheric, blood-red walled Redcliffe Caves as part of the Bristol Shakespeare Festival. The cast of seven lead small audiences through the labyrinthine caves as they told the story of a once-loyal soldier in a supernatural war-torn Scotland.
Read MoreRalph Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave star respectively as the King and Queen Margaret in this Almeida Theatre production. It marks Fiennes’s return to the Almeida stage after sixteen years.
Read MoreThe London Philharmonic Orchestra and Globe Education created a musical version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream including pieces by Mendelssohn, Elgar and Britten.
Read MoreThis production moved Shakespeare's Macbeth into the present day and thrust Lady Macbeth into the spotlight. Combining ballet, street, contemporary dance, Latin, poetry, prose and British Sign language for the deaf, South West Dance Theatre retold the classic tale. In this version, it was Lady Macbeth who found her natural drive and motivations displaced, forfeiting virtue and honour for a more meteoric career.
South West Dance Theatre is a Bristol-based collective that promotes diversity in dance through eclectic home-grown choreography drawing on a range of styles from ballet and contemporary to street, jazz and Latin. As well as performing to audiences in a range of venues from theatres to festivals, the company brings their fresh expressive dance theatre to a variety of subjects from the physics of light to Shakespeare. In April 2016, the company also led a Macbeth-inspired dance workshop for pupils at Elmfield School for Deaf.
Read MoreIn this production of Shakespeare’s Lear, Phil Willmott casts Ursula Mohan as the monarch. The tagline of the production is ‘What if King Lear was a Woman?’ Reviewers have commented on the striking mother/daughter dynamics that emerge as a result of the casting choice.
Read More“On a remote island, Prospero plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place using illusion, magical spirits and skilful manipulation. Shakespeare's enchanting, fast-paced, family comedy performed in the beautiful outdoor setting of Inveresk Lodge.” –description from the Fringe Programme
Read MoreThe "world's first cycling theatre company," The HandleBards returned to Edinburgh in 2016 with two troupes, The Boys and The Girls. Each troupe was composed of four actors who carried set, props and costumes around the UK (and beyond) on bicycles to perform all-male Much Ado About Nothing and Richard III and all-female Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew in unique venues from gardens to castles.
Read MoreGo People's take on Midsummer was a modern, anarchic, ninety minute Dream with a cast of just seven.
Read MoreShakespeare’s Globe and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse have come together to stage a touring production of The Two Gentleman of Verona, one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays.
Read MoreEach year, London-based company Tower Theatre (one of the companies selected to be part of the RSC's 2016 A Midsummer Night's Dream "play for the nation" project) takes a production to the Pré Catalan garden in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. In 2016 - the 25th year of Tower Theatre in Paris - they presented Romeo and Juliet in the garden's Théâtre de Verdure du Jardin Shakespeare. The open-air theatre space is planted with flowers, trees and plants that are mentioned in Shakespeare's plays.
Read MoreShakespeare's late romance, The Winter's Tale (a tale of jealous furies, an abandoned baby, a sheep shearing feast and a bear) was performed in The Willow Globe (Y Glôb Byw), a scaled down, living version of the Globe in London (a third of its size in diameter) in Llandrindod Wells, Powys, Wales. Its Artistic Directors Phil Bowen and Sue Best believe it is one of the largest willow constructions in the country and probably the only one in use as a theatre in the world.
Read MoreOphelias Zimmer was a feminist alternative narrative that approached Hamlet from the point of view of the Dane's doomed lover, Ophelia. The action (or lack thereof) all took place in Ophelia's claustrophobic room where repetition enforced the play's reading of the character as a victim ensnared, silenced and aestheticised by Elsinore's patriarchy.
Read MoreDirector Trevor Nunn continued his journey through the Complete Works with one of Shakespeare's lesser performed plays, King John. The production used period costume and took a classic approach to the play.
Read MoreLosing none of its power to provoke and sometimes outrage, Shakespeare’s controversial double-act gets a thoroughly fresh, fast and distinctly Irish makeover. Caroline Byrne’s production transports The Taming of the Shrew to the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland – the design and costumes of this production will reflect this setting.
Read MoreFollowing her work with director Carrie Cracknell on the Young Vic production of Macbeth (November 2015 - January 2016), Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin returned to the play in her dance piece Tomorrow. The performance featured an original score by composer, sound and multimedia artist Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) and aimed to "[give] physical life to the psychological conflict that led Macbeth to murder." Tomorrow "[re-imagined] Shakespeare's Macbeth - mapping out the actions of the characters alongside the illusory, supernatural and psychological disturbances of the play embodied by the cast of 'witches'."
Read More
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
