Contact: Jim Byk
SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE
Founded by the pioneering American actor and director Sam Wanamaker, Shakespeare’s Globe is a vibrant organization and reconstructed open-air theatre on the bank of the River Thames dedicated to the exploration of Shakespearean, Elizabethan, Jacobean, and contemporary theatre.
Through an ambitious and lively theatre season, a dynamic and varied education program and a rich and interesting exhibition, the Globe has become a significant part of the national and international theatre landscape. Under the Globe’s prior artistic directors, Mark Rylance, Dominic Dromgoole, and Emma Rice and current artistic director Michelle Terry, the theatre has worked its way through Shakespeare’s canon, providing a huge wealth of insight into each play when it is produced afresh within the architecture for which Shakespeare originally wrote.
Neil Constable has been Chief Executive of Shakespeare’s Globe since 2010.
The Globe has always been internationally driven, having been built by an American; welcoming international audiences into its oak embrace throughout its life and taking its work back out into the world including many theatre tours and workshops in the US.
In 2014, Shakespeare’s Globe presented its newly constructed Sam Wanamaker Playhouse – an archetype of a Jacobean indoor theatre, completely unique amongst London venues and enabling Shakespeare’s Globe to present theatre productions all year round. In 2016, the Globe celebrated the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, welcoming President Barack Obama, and seeing the return of the two-year world tour of Hamlet, during which the company travelled over 300,000 km, playing 293 performances at 202 venues in 197 countries, covering almost every country on earth.
The Globe also created The Complete Walk, a series of short films, featuring scenes from every one of Shakespeare’s plays. The series, which was screened for free along the bank of the Thames, featured some of the UK’s finest actors and included footage shot in the real locations of the plays, from Athens to the Ardennes, Vienna to Verona, Towton to the Tower of London.