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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 14:43:54 GMT
Another King Lear? Goodness, the best bit about that play is that he's called his daughter Gonorrhea but even that chucklesome nugget doesn't justify another version so soon.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 14:49:50 GMT
And named another daughter after a Republican US President, and then is surprised at how they treat him.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 14:52:24 GMT
And named another daughter after a Republican US President, and then is surprised at how they treat him. One of them is called Hoover? How did I miss that? |
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Post by cirque on Apr 12, 2017 17:47:30 GMT
Looking ahead...with the AD role being advertised and an internal review underway I guess the logical thing will be for a Guest Director to oversee 2018 and begin process of unification across organisation.With Mark Rylance currently working Globe project for Westminster Abbey one wonders if he may be called upon to develop a season and act as guide for eventual incumbent.It must be worth a thought as new appointment cannot effectively take place until midsummer and there is too little time to create a full bodied season.There needs to be return to ideas of small scale tours...what a loss this year...and the Globe to Glibe style of international visitors.
Worth thoughts and opinions at this time
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 17:58:54 GMT
Looking at previous years the Sam Wanamaker season is usually announced in May so they need to get their skates on, whatever they're doing!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 18:25:46 GMT
Looking at previous years the Sam Wanamaker season is usually announced in May so they need to get their skates on, whatever they're doing! They're doing 'Starlight Express'??!? How brave. |
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Post by rockinrobin on Apr 12, 2017 18:42:06 GMT
Looking at previous years the Sam Wanamaker season is usually announced in May so they need to get their skates on, whatever they're doing! They're doing 'Starlight Express'??!? How brave. Or "Xanadu" perhaps. I'd pay a lot to see both in this venue... |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 18:54:58 GMT
Looking at previous years the Sam Wanamaker season is usually announced in May so they need to get their skates on, whatever they're doing! No need for those skates. Emma Rice is AD until April 2018 and I'm sure is planning the Winter season in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to schedule. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 18:57:21 GMT
and the Globe to Glibe style of international visitors. Shakespeare's Globe has promised further South Asian visitors to be announced for this summer's Festival of Independence. |
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Post by partytentdown on Apr 12, 2017 19:33:17 GMT
Side note, interview with Dromgoole in the Evening Standard today doesn't reveal much about his thoughts about the whole thing but he does say he has no interest in being a 'caretaker' for a season
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2017 11:17:36 GMT
Open letters from Emma Rice and Dominic Dromgoole to the future artistic director of the Globe. Which don't pull any punches to the extent I'm surprised the Globe have put them up on the website! blog.shakespearesglobe.com/tagged/A-Letter-FromFrom Rice: From Dromgoole: |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2017 11:22:38 GMT
Very honest and very interesting that these were posted by the official accounts. Gives me a tiny bit of hope that I might set foot in there again for anything but the loos.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2017 11:28:51 GMT
Sorry, Bridge Theatre, this is *much* more interesting from the world of theatre today. I would never expect to see such frankness coming from the official theatre social media accounts, all the more surprising and fascinating that the letters don't stop at merely alluding to unpleasantness within. I'll be honestly surprised (and seriously impressed) if the letters remain up in the long-term, I'll be very interested to see what reactions this gets from people who aren't just semi-casual observers like us.
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Post by zahidf on Apr 19, 2017 11:40:40 GMT
A good read. Still one of the most stupid, short sighted things a theatre has done in a LONG time
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Post by zahidf on Apr 19, 2017 11:45:54 GMT
In case it is removed, here is Emma Rice's letter in full
A letter from Artistic Director, Emma Rice
Dear future Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe,
I am writing this as the deadline for applications looms and my final Summer Season, The Summer of Love, prepares to launch. Before the Globe story is thrown up into the air again and the pieces fall in a new pattern, I wanted to share some thoughts with you.
Firstly, congratulations! By the time you are offered this most precious of jobs, you will have survived and triumphed over a rigorous and detailed interview process. You will have imagined a life dedicated to this most joyous and vibrant of spaces and will have shifted the tectonic plates of your own, equally precious life, to make this union happen.
And a union it is. The Globe is not a job, it is a vocation and an all-consuming, delicious tangle of histories, hopes, passions and agendas. You will be the latest in a line of experimental radicals and you will be in for the most intoxicating experience of your life. I have learnt much in my short time here and I thought I would take a moment to pass some of this knowledge to you, dear theatre friend, as you begin your own journey at the Globe.
I have learnt that a Globe audience is the best audience! Alert, excited and often standing, they are actively willing the night to be the best of their lives; they are generous beyond anything I have known before. Alive to the tragedy of life as well as the fun, they have taught me to speak with them not to them and to capture the moment with instinct, meaning and wit. They are the heartbeat and energy of this extraordinary place and will tell you not only what they need, but what you need.
I have learnt to work with other directors and what a gift they have been! Heroes, friends and inspiration all, they have cracked open my experience as a theatre maker and shown me such wisdom, ferocity, vision and dedication. I salute and thank them all.
I have learnt that there are as many opinions about what the Globe and Shakespeare should be as there are people you talk to.
I have learnt not to say that I sometimes find Shakespeare hard to understand.
I have learnt to trust my team with my heart and soul. They are true lovers and fighters, dedicated to a radical and relevant artistic mission and loyal beyond belief. They will listen to you, help you and support you and dance with you as they make real all your dreams. Take care of them for me.
I have learnt to love Shakespeare.
I have learnt where my personal and professional boundaries were. Born to please, I have enjoyed a life filled with encouragement, delight and love. I walked into the Globe expecting this to continue but my blessed path was crossed and I had to call on my beliefs, principles and integrity for guidance.
I have learnt, never again, to allow myself to be excluded from the rooms where decisions are made.
I learnt that I have many friends.
These precious things I have learnt and I am profoundly grateful.
But, dear friend, no more lessons. I chose to leave because, as important and beloved as the Globe is to me, the Board did not love and respect me back. It did not understand what I saw, what I felt and what I created with my actors, creative teams and the audience. They began to talk of a new set of rules that I did not sign up to and could not stand by. Nothing is worth giving away my artistic freedom for, it has been too hard fought for.
Like you, I have happily given my life to theatre. It has been my lover, my partner, my children and my future. I do not choose what I see, feel and do, it chooses me. I have spent my life developing my skills to be able to hear my instincts, reveal my inner stories and to be able to communicate them with my temporary community of strangers, my audience. And to reveal these truths, I have always used whatever medium best tells that story.
The Globe has been the making of me. Here, I have found my fight and my ‘right’, I have stood up for what I believe in and tried to do it with kindness, care and seriousness. However, in the wake of recent events, the Globe is wrestling with what, at its core, it now stands for. It is still in the process of deciding and clarifying what its fight and its ‘right’ are. I had to choose to leave because I choose myself and my work. Never think that my decision to step down in 2018 was simply about lights and sound, it was about personal trust and artistic freedom. You must make sure that your own freedom is assured.
So, ask the right questions, not only of the Globe but of yourself and take on the challenge with independence, caution and resolve. The Globe deserves an Artistic leader so fierce and true that they would steal a building and carry it over the river for what they believe in. It needs a leader who will shout to the heavens about what it is to be free and loving and one who is determined to make a difference during their brief time on the planet.
The Globe will always be part of me, so know I am here for you to enjoy beer, or tears, or dancing – and believe me, there will be all three of these pleasures in this place of rare humanity! Remember, you are part of a magnificent line of fearless theatre animals; in its astonishing 20-year history, this warm belly of humanity has been conceived, built and led by free-thinkers devoted only to Shakespeare, theatre and above all, the audience. You are not alone. As I plan and dream of the theatre adventures I am yet to have, I hand you the baton with pride, celebration and sadness as I say goodbye to this glorious chapter of my life.
I envy you so, but my heart cheers you on with a war cry of hope,
Keep in touch,
Emma Rice
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Post by zahidf on Apr 19, 2017 11:46:13 GMT
Here is Droogle's
A letter from former Artistic Director, Dominic Dromgoole
A letter to the next Artistic Director.
Dear Fearless, and Fortunate soul,
Twenty years ago, Mark Rylance and Lennie James led a company in a modern dress production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, the first production in the new Globe. Much scholarship went into the show, and twice as much free-wheeling invention. Happily, exhilaratingly, no-one knew entirely what they were doing, and they and the audience joined to discover a new language for making theatre. An adventure was launched, which led to twenty continuous years of chance-taking, boldness and surprise. Six people in pyjamas doing Cymbeline; scrupulous Original Practice work; throwing a roof on the building for Titus Andronicus; building rose gardens in the yard for Merry Wives; and yes, phantasmagorias of light and sound for last year’s Dream; and brute urbanising for Imogen. Shakespeare done with freedom and a curiosity to match the audience’s.
That is the Globe tradition. It was new, and it is still new. A newness that begins again every afternoon and every evening when the audience come in and draw their breath at the sun, the wood, the colour, the swirl of it all, and each other. Newness is not easy for everyone. The bile towards the Globe was there at the beginning, was felt keenly by Mark, was ever-present in my time, and spilled out last autumn hideously from those both pro- and anti-Emma Rice. It goes with the territory. The Globe is forever breaking moulds, that inspires fear, and fear can lead to loathing. The rush of energy that accompanies the new, and the roar of approval from those happy to climb on board is more than ample compensation. Dear Fearless and Fortunate Soul, above all else keep the Globe new.
From the very start, the Globe pushed the boundaries on BAME casting, an action which we continued in my time with the natural joy of walking into a brighter room. Emma has carried that torch. Globe gender-bending began with Shakespeare, and Mark extended it with Vanessa Redgrave as Prospero, and with three all-female companies, including Phyllida Lloyd’s first Shakespeare with a female company, a seedling which grew into a spectacular tree. We carried this on, and were proud to transfer two successful plays by women writers to the West End in my last year. Emma extended this experiment much further, and she was right to. Carry on pushing these envelopes.
Mark experimented with new plays, a risk that grew fast as we presented countless big new public works. New writing beside a Shakespeare is a constant reminder that Shakespeare himself was once new, and the energy of the former electrifies the latter. Emma has carried that on, and, for me, it should remain at the heart of the Globe.
The Globe’s youth creates endless opportunities. It fits no particular mould – neither subsidised nor truly commercial – so is still free to invent itself. Over the last twenty years, it has freestyled different ways of playing Shakespeare; created a small-scale touring network, both national and international; built a new theatre, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse; held a huge International Festival, and created a filming programme and a VOD platform. Contrary to some bizarre lies which have been circulating, all done within its unsubsidised means. Emma came in with a host of new directions, of new ways to facilitate artists, and with a large-scale intervention into how shows are staged.
The fact that Emma has been stopped in fulfilling her ambitions is heart-breaking. It is also wrong. The spirit of a theatre is that it should follow the lead of its artistic director. And an artistic director cannot usefully be anyone but themselves. The fact of your contract is also that, unless otherwise specified, you are free to invent as you wish. The only people who have the moral strength to get rid of you are the audience. No-one else, not the board, not your supposed colleagues, not the vulture punditry, just the audience. Emma had lost a little of the Globe audience, but all the evidence is that she had gained some as well. Please remember, F, and F Soul, that your first responsibility is to yourself, and to them.
At the heart of the Globe are, for me, two things. First the £5 ticket for the yard. Over the last twenty years that single fact has given over five million people an extraordinary experience for less than a sandwich costs. They have seen Mark in his pomp, Gemma Arterton’s Rosaline, Gugu Mbatha Raw’s Nell Gwynn, Roger Allam’s Falstaff, Eve Best’s Beatrice and Cleopatra, and countless others for only £5. It is a miracle. For all the talk of accessibility elsewhere, there is nothing equivalent to touch it. It makes many uneasy, many who espouse accessibility write with a shameful snobbery about tourists and students as if they were a sub-human species. There was also a steady pressure internally to raise that price, a pressure which Mark and I and Emma resisted. The £5 ticket is at the heart of the Globe’s success, you must fight for its survival.
The second thing at the heart of the Globe, for me, is playing in a shared light. A democratic space where a story unfolds as an imaginative agreement between text, actors and audience. It is this that Emma experimented to change, and which is at the heart of her disagreements with colleagues and the board. For me, shared light was the unique Globe tool, which subverted the orthodoxies of director’s and critic’s theatre, and which handed back to the actors and the audiences the capacity to collaborate together freely on making an imaginative experience occur. Taking away that uniqueness doesn’t strike me as radical, it strikes me as conformist. Every theatre has light and sound, the Globe didn’t. This uniqueness matters to me, and for me, F and F Soul, it is important to preserve.
However Emma didn’t come in to emulate myself, or Mark, she came in to be herself, and so she triumphantly was. As an Artistic Director myself, I respect Emma’s choice in doing so, and I cannot respect the blocking of her choice. No-one, not committees, not cabals, not connivers, no-one can set this policy but the AD. They have to make these choices with passion and conviction for the whole of the rest of a theatre to make sense. Early on in your time, you will find it invaluable to listen to the many experienced voices around you, and also invaluable to be exceptionally wary of those who do not want to advise but who want to influence. Everybody wants to be Artistic Director. They can’t all be. Only you can. It is vital, Dear F and F S, that you ring-fence with iron and steel your own freedom and ability to make choices. This must be put down in black and white, and made public, and it must be adhered to. With an ear to what the audience wants, and with an eye for where to take them, no-one should set artistic policy but the Artistic Director.
Now that Emma has carried out her experiments with light and sound, it is pointless to pretend she hasn’t. What has happened, can’t unhappen. Many felt alienated by it, many loved it. To write it out of the Globe story and say it can’t happen ever again is fundamentalist, and as daft as any form of fundamentalism. Emma’s experiment should be folded into the Globe’s story as gleefully as all the other experiments have been; new work, internationalism, modernising, design interventions. For me, the majority of the work should be in a shared light, and with natural sound, but to make it that and that only, just doesn’t add up. Dear F and F Soul, fight to keep room for manoeuvre.
You will notice, Dear F and F Soul, that some of my comments have alluded to negative energy. It would be foolish to pretend it isn’t there. The Globe has its enemies without - many don’t like the freedom of the place, its open-ness and its warmth. Some simply can’t cope with its happiness. Our culture and its commentators often prefer the shrivelled sausage to the plump one, and the Globe is fat and juicy. The degree of bile can be disabling. I have just had my own and my family’s Easter wrecked by some pathological viciousness, and I’ve been gone a year. Emma has had to put up with much worse.
Sadly the negativity doesn’t only come from without, there is also a fair sum within. There are structural problems, there are personality problems, there is too much fighting for territory, and there are too many who feel free to comment on work without ever taking the risk of making it. It is absurd that out of the mess of last year, the only person to be suffering the consequences is Emma. However the Globe is taking steps to address the problems, you have an excellent CEO in Neil Constable, who has copped too much of the blame for last year’s imbroglio while doing all he could to avoid it, and you have the best theatre department in the country. The fact that the Globe has gone on making excellent work through summer and winter, with so much distraction, is testament to their excellence. Dear F and F Soul, you will have to be prepared for tough decisions, you will have to be strong and independent, but you will have some of the best around you.
Above and beyond all else, Dear F and F Soul, if you inhabit the same office which Mark, I and Emma were blessed to sit in, every day through the long summer, you will hear at 1 o’clock, and at 6.30, a bubbling hubbub of excited chatter, and standing to look out you will see a snaking queue of four or five hundred people, eager to charge through the doors, and jostle their way to the best positions in the yard. The quality of their excitement and anticipation, of their sheer appetite for a great afternoon or evening, of their big human hope - there is no price that can be put on that. It is one of the biggest privileges in the world of theatre to be able to join with it.
Relish, enjoy, make their hopes and yours real.
All the best,
Dominic Dromgoole
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Post by theatremadness on Apr 19, 2017 12:34:06 GMT
I have learnt, never again, to allow myself to be excluded from the rooms where decisions are made. She, er, wants to be in the room where it happens? |
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Post by rumbledoll on Apr 19, 2017 12:56:30 GMT
So it was HER decision all along, wasn't it? And the Board simply is too short-sighted to see her ingenious transformation of the Globe.. Good riddance!
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Post by peggs on Apr 19, 2017 13:07:01 GMT
Thanks for posting, couldn't use the link as website clearly considered subversive by work in my lunch break. How very frank and most interesting, yes I'm surprised they have posted these two but very pleased they have. I have had such wonderful experiences in this space, many more good than bad, that I really hope to be able to continue to embrace it (and equally importantly at a fiver).
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Post by zahidf on Apr 19, 2017 13:35:22 GMT
So it was HER decision all along, wasn't it? And the Board simply is too short-sighted to see her ingenious transformation of the Globe.. Good riddance!
Well... No, sounds like constructive dismissal, in that they changed the rules she agreed to.
Droogle certainly seems to be on her side.
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Post by rumbledoll on Apr 19, 2017 14:52:26 GMT
So why is she imposing (all the way through the article) that it's her leaving rather than her being dismissed?
Dromgoole says it's not experimentation the theatre opposes - all-female cast and all sort of things been done long before Emma Rice, but what's historically important for this particular venue, including shared light. Don't see he much agrees, he's just being tactical (which is a surprise to me).
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Post by Jan on Apr 19, 2017 14:53:24 GMT
Both sound very full of themselves don't they.
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Post by zahidf on Apr 19, 2017 15:05:13 GMT
So why is she imposing (all the way through the article) that it's her leaving rather than her being dismissed? Dromgoole says it's not experimentation the theatre opposes - all-female cast and all sort of things been done long before Emma Rice, but what's historically important for this particular venue, including shared light. Don't see he much agrees, he's just being tactical (which is a surprise to me).
Because ( reading between the lines0 they gave her an ultimatum as a change to what was previously agreed, and she quit because of it. that's the essence of what I mean by constructive dismissal.
'The fact that Emma has been stopped in fulfilling her ambitions is heart-breaking. It is also wrong'
Doesn't seem anything than supportive of her tbh!
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Post by zahidf on Apr 19, 2017 15:05:56 GMT
Both sound very full of themselves don't they.
You need to be to run a theatre company I would assume, to a degree
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Post by rumbledoll on Apr 19, 2017 15:33:33 GMT
So why is she imposing (all the way through the article) that it's her leaving rather than her being dismissed? Dromgoole says it's not experimentation the theatre opposes - all-female cast and all sort of things been done long before Emma Rice, but what's historically important for this particular venue, including shared light. Don't see he much agrees, he's just being tactical (which is a surprise to me).
Because ( reading between the lines0 they gave her an ultimatum as a change to what was previously agreed, and she quit because of it. that's the essence of what I mean by constructive dismissal.
'The fact that Emma has been stopped in fulfilling her ambitions is heart-breaking. It is also wrong'
Doesn't seem anything than supportive of her tbh!
I see. Thank you for clarifying.
It actually IS heart-breaking. In general sense. But making The Globe all tacky and drilling in those barbaric sound systems with her Dream is much more heart-breaking.. I have nothing against her personally (not my style of directing, obv, but tastes are different), she is just a wrong person fo this particular job, that's it. |
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