Shakespeare's Globe

Globe to Globe: 37 Plays, 37 Languages

Shakespeare's Globe in London has scheduled a run of 37 works by Shakespeare in 37 languages as part of the World Shakespeare Festival in 2012.

The run of plays kick off on Shakespeare's birthday, April 23, but the Globe to Globe Season opens April 21 with the Isango Ensemble of South Africa performing Venus and Adonis in IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, SeSotho, Setswana, Afrikaans, and South African English. Six weeks of performances will include the following highlights:

• From the world‘s youngest country, South Sudan, a specially formed theatre company will present Cymbeline.
  
  
• The three Henry VI plays about England‘s first great civil war will be presented as an epic and sweeping Balkan trilogy, featuring national theaters from Serbia, Albania, and Macedonia.
  
  
• For the first time ever a Shakespeare play will be performed in its entirety in British Sign Language as the Deafinitely Theatre from London performs the pun-riddled text of Love's Labour's Lost.
  
  
• From Lithuania comes one of the greatest productions of Hamlet in modern times under the direction of the legendary Eimuntas Nekrosius.
  
  
• The Merchant of Venice will be presented in Hebrew by Israeli National Theatre company Habima, its first ever visit to the United Kingdom.
  
  
• Featuring the haka, waiata, and many other aspects of Maori culture, a production of Troilus and Cressida from New Zealand has been put together by Rawiri Paratene, star of Whale Rider.
  
  
• In another first, the National Theatre of China will perform Richard III; the company, representing the new face of Chinese theatre, has not visited the UK before.
  
  
• The Belarus Free Theatre, an underground troupe that performs plays while constantly avoiding persecution from state officials, will present King Lear.
  
  
• From Ramallah in Palestine comes the Ashtar Theatre presenting Richard II.
  
  
• Roy-e-Sabs will leave Kabul, Afghanistan, for the first time, to bring a production of The Comedy of Errors to Shakespeare‘s Globe.

Here's a chance, as well, to see couple of Shakespeare's plays spoken in the languages of their settings, with Pericles being produced by the National Theatre of Greece and Julius Caesar coming from the I Termini Company of Rome. Two Spanish dialects are paired in the Henry IV plays as Compañia Nacional de Teatro from Mexico City plays Part 1, and Elkafka Espacio Teatral of Buenes Aires, Argentina, performs Part 2 (Rakata from Madrid, Spain, will do Henry VIII). A form of American English will be represented by the Q Brothers and Chicago Shakespeare Theater's production of Othello in Hip Hop.

The Globe to Globe Season concludes June 10 with the Shakespeare Globe's own production of Henry V in English (and, presumably, parts of it in French). For the complete list of Globe to Globe productions and dates on Shakespeareances.com, go to The Bard on the Boards.

Shakespeare's Globe is re-creation of the playhouse run by Shakespeare's company of players and located on the site of the original Globe. The World Shakespeare Festival is a celebration of Shakespeare as the world's playwright, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in an unprecedented collaboration with leading UK and international arts organizations. It runs from April 23 to November 2012 and forms part of London 2012 Festival, which is the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad, bringing together leading artists from all over the world together in a UK-wide festival in the summer of 2012. Click here for more information on the World Shakespeare Festival.

October 28, 2011

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