Globe season Summer of Love. And Emma Rice is leaving 2018

And doesn't hip hop Shakespeare focus the audience's attention on the language very effectively?

I have to admit, it is a good question. I wonder if we'll ever find out?

It's been funny to see some actors who were actually in Original Practice productions tweeting ardent support of the view that the Globe needs Emma Rice's innovations and that her leaving in April 2018 is terrible. I'm not sure if they realise that they're criticising the type of work they themselves were involved in.

It's impossible to produce a 'preserved in aspic' version of Shakespeare, anyway - we simply know too little about the original staging of the plays.
The few hints we have - including the complaints about the noise from neighbours and the fact that some people would turn up just to watch the jig - indicate that they were far from being po-faced and 'serious', or treated with great reverance.

Part of the reason for the Globe was to discover through practice how the original space could have been used, to gain new insights into the work.

But with Shakespeare there probably isn't an original - that's the point. As far as I understand, there was never a point at which Hamlet was finished and locked down - it changed from the first production to the second and carried on from then till now.

Why do you keep bringing up hip-hop as though the entirety of the hip-hop musical genre is inherently disrespectful?

Some interesting quotes from Sam Wanamaker in this 1973 article



Mind you some people will probably object to an "alien" having anything to say about "our culture"

This is really interesting Alexandra, so thanks for putting it here, I would never have come across it on Facebook. The thing that we all know about The Globe is that it pays its way, no subsidies and has had a brilliant fund raising scheme from the beginning. If this fragile situation has been damaged then I can see why they have decided Rice must go. But what a shame to spend all that money on lighting with no return. Was there a business plan? Another case of 'someone else's money' I expect. Shakespeare who was a canny business guy would be horrified. ( and I'd love a peak at the fund raising balance sheet)

Wow. I sincerely hope your loved ones never have cause to seek help for mental health issues, because it's clear there'd be no sympathy coming from your direction. Whatever you think of Emma Rice's work or the sanctity of Shakespeare or whatever, people being in a place of severe work-induced stress is absolutely nothing to be dismissive and sneery about, and if it feels like it's a modern day thing that never happened in the past, then you are quite simply deluded. People may not have had the support or the help back in the olden days, and they may not have felt able to talk about it or had the terminology to talk about it, but people sure as hell suffered from work-induced stress and stress-related depression nonetheless. Don't you dare be so disgustingly dismissive of that.

It's being spread about there but I don't think it was created as a public post (it was a reply to an article which is being widely shared, so it's being seen by anyone who sees the article), so maybe fairer to delete it. I can't edit it so I've asked Lynette to.

Why employ a trendy director who is going to use modern fancy methods that cost a lot of dough ?

Either the board dont plan these things or the cost of lights and mics is an escape goat

Everything Baemax said, with the addition of: Unless you have worked in a very busy (and the Globe gets very busy) time pressured customer service envirnoment, then kindly keep your views to yourself. When you deal with dozens of angry people taking things out personally on you that are actually beyond your control day in day out is enough to make anyone unwell. It's a hard enough job working with the public, but when that public are united in their dislike of the service you're helping to provide, the staff in question deserve the utmost sympathy and respect. 

I've tried to have an adult discussion with this poster but that last post is the final straw. 

(For the record I'm very much enjoying hearing from others who have differing views to my own and I think everyone else has been very respectful in their debates)