Shakespeare’s Globe is delighted to announce the 2019/20 Sam Wanamaker Playhouse Season. Centred around She Wolves and Shrews, the season is a celebration and interrogation of women, power, and the role of the feminine in shaping our past, present and future.
The candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse will play host to a world-premiere of Ella Hickson’s new play Swive [Elizabeth], Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Richard III, and The Taming of the Shrew, and Middleton’s Women Beware Women. Sandi and Jenifer Toksvig have written a new family show dubbed, Christmas at the (Snow) Globe, and a series of candlelit ghost tales will include a new story from Jeanette Winterson.
Other events running throughout the season include half-term storytelling festival, Half Term Tales at the Globe, with the new Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell, and a double bill of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas, marking the centenary year since the removal of the sex disqualification act. The Globe’s flagship project for secondary and post-16 students, Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank, reaches its 14th year with Macbeth.
Opening the theatre season on 5 November, Sean Holmes and Ilinca Radulian will co-direct the Globe Ensemble in Henry VI and Richard III, completing the year-long journey through the history of our ‘scepter’d isle’. The Globe Ensemble includes Sarah Amankwah, Philip Arditti, Nina Bowers, Jonathan Broadbent, Leaphia Darko, Steffan Donnelly, Colin Hurley, Sophie Russell, and Helen Schlesinger. Sean Holmes is Associate Artistic Director, and most recently directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream as part of the 2019 Summer Season. He recently stepped down from the Lyric Hammersmith after almost a decade as Artistic Director and Joint Chief Executive. Sean’s tenure at the Lyric included programming game-changing shows such as Three Kingdoms, directing 22 productions, including the Olivier Award-winning Blasted, the worldwide hit Ghost Stories, and the first stage version of Bugsy Malone in over a decade. His years of experience working with ensembles include Filter and the ground-breaking Secret Theatre project. Ilinca Radulian was Associate Director on the Secret Theatre national tour, and assistant directed Hamlet and Mary Stuart as a resident director at the Almeida Theatre. Other credits include Fight Club (site specific, RO), Hypothetical, Lost and Found (Rapid Write Response, Theatre503), and Inland Empire (site specific, USA).
The world-premiere of award-winning writer Ella Hickson’s new play Swive [Elizabeth] will be directed by Natalie Abrahami. Swive interrogates the power of sex in gaining and maintaining control in a patriarchy. Elizabeth I was a political mastermind and monarchic force who reigned supreme for 45 years, and yet she still felt that her power ultimately resided in her beauty. Swive explores power, sex, intimacy, solitude and desire, shining candlelight on the savage pressure that women are under to sell themselves on their least interesting quality.
Over the Christmas period, the Globe Theatre will open its doors for a new family show created and directed by Sandi Toksvig and Jenifer Toksvig, Christmas at the (Snow) Globe. The show will be full of song, laughter, mulled wine, and the magic of Christmas.
Sandi and Jenifer’s adaptation of Treasure Island reopened the Leicester Haymarket Theatre in Christmas 2018, and they are delighted to be working together again to celebrate Christmas at the Globe. They both agree that it is, indeed, the most wonderful time of the year.
Opening 1 February, Shakespeare’s The Taming of The Shrew will be directed by Maria Gaitanidi. The production will be performed by an ensemble cast comprising Lila Clements, Mattia Mariotti, Melissa Riggall, and Globe Artistic Director, Michelle Terry. Maria Gaitanidi is founder of the ensemble ‘We Are Raw Material’, bringing together artists who make art in various forms, using solely the rawness of the space, the actor, the text. The artists create in the here and now with the audience as witness. Maria works extensively in the UK, Italy and Greece. Her London credits include Black Monk (The Holborn Workshop), The Late Mattia Pascal (Shoreditch Church) and directors labs on Platonov and Suddenly Last Summer (The Young Vic). She recently completed her first short film Salt Wound starring Stacy Martin.
Running in repertory with The Taming of the Shrew, Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women opens 21 February, directed by Amy Hodge. Women Beware Women is an enduringly relevant exploration of gender power dynamics that uncovers the savage underbelly of desire, lust and ambition through the prism of the flamboyant Florentine court. Amy’s recent credits include Mr Gum And The Dancing Bear – The Musical! (National Theatre), Mother Courage and Her Children (Royal Exchange), and The Brexit Shorts for The Guardian and Headlong. She is making her first virtual reality film Sundowning, for the National Theatre and National Film Board of Canada, about the experience of dementia.
Special events will continue throughout the season, with a ghost story series, Deep Night, Dark Night: Tales from Beyond the Grave, including a new commissioned story from Jeanette Winterson, Victorian stories and true tales of ghosts of London. A double bill of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and her lesser-known paper, Three Guineas on 28 November, marking the centenary year since the removal of the sex disqualification act, and Nancy Astor becoming the first female MP.
The Globe’s Voices in the Dark series will continue in January and February with Notes to the Forgotten She Wolves. This collection of performances will shed candlelight on the women who have so far remained in darkness in a world history dominated by stories about men, by men. Taking their lead from Shakespeare’s own She Wolf, Queen Margaret of Anjou, the Globe will ask the Shakespeares of today to pen their own letters to the forgotten women of the past, and write these women back into history (herstory).
Alongside family performances of Macbeth and Christmas at the (Snow) Globe, families can enjoy special tours of the Globe and the half term edition of the Globe’s family storytelling festival, Half Term Tales at the Globe, which returns in October. The week of performances, workshops and author events which will explore all things magical, and the line-up includes the new Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell, illustrator Chris Riddell, storyteller Kevin Graal and authors Sophie Anderson, Abi Elphinstone and Piers Torday.
