Shakespeare’s Globe produces new plays?Jessica Lusk is our Literary Manager. She is responsible for

Shakespeare’s Globe produces new plays?Jessica Lusk is our Literary Manager. She is responsible for the research and development of all our new writing. Lucky her! If you came to see Emilia in 2018 you can thank Jessica in part for that.In this blog she explains why and how we commission new plays at Shakespeare’s Globe. If you’re a budding playwright this is essential reading. The Globe has always been a newwriting venue. It’s hard to believe now but Shakespeare was a new writer once,and The Globe I write from now, (the third Globe) is still a new writing venuetoday.Our first brand new play was seen byenthusiastic audiences back in 2002, it was called The Golden Ass byPeter Oswald – an adaptation of a Roman Classic – with a cast of 30 actorsplaying almost 200 different characters, with puppetry, opera andmini-scooters… it was certainly not a case of starting small! Since then we have produced almost 40new plays, for both the Globe and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, includingJessica Swale’s Nell Gwynn, Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn,Che Walker’s The Frontline, Claire van Kampen’s Farinelli andthe King, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Emilia and most recently Tom Stuart’s After Edward.They’ve played here, in the West End and on Broadway, as well as on tour aroundthe UK.Now, as we enter our 22ndyear, the process of commissioning and developing new work is getting ashake-up. Shakespeare wrote his plays specifically for the Lord Chamberlain’sMen and for the playhouses they performed in, and once they had passed thecensor then it was left to the audience to decide their worth.We want to take this as our guide: to workwith writers and produce exciting new plays written bespoke to the architecturethey will be performed in. We will give writers the space and time to work withour academics and research team, spend time with our actors, see plays inour theatres, experiment with and learn from the architectural playingconditions of our two theatres, the practitioners who work in them, and ultimatelywrite a play bespoke to those theatres.We’re calling this idea ‘TheScriptorium’, hearkening back to the medieval idea of a space devoted towriting, but more on that another time…!Our cause is to celebrate and interrogate Shakespeare’s transformativeimpact on the world - and where can that impact be more felt than in the writers oftoday…. Artistic descendants of this extraordinary shaman.Our aim is to programme and produce new workwithin a season of Shakespeare’s plays that support and complement each other.For example, we programmed Emiliain a season of Shakespeare’s plays in which the character of Emilia threads herway through several stories – Othello, The Winter’s Tale and The Two NobleKinsmen. These plays provided an opportunity and framework to reflect onthe myriad influences this ‘Dark Lady’ may have had on Shakespeare’s imagination,but crucially in Emilia,Morgan Lloyd Malcolm placed this revolutionary poet right where she is meant tobe – at the centre of her own story. At the beginning of 2019 we hosted our first evernew writing festival: responses to our winter production of Marlowe’s DoctorFaustus. The central Faustian bargain has traditionally been associatedwith the male ‘soul’, and so, we commissioned six female writers to give afeminine response to the central provocation at the heart of Doctor Faustusthat asks 'what would you sell your soul for?’ The responses were surprising, revealing, funny and truly moving, and the reaction from theaudiences were similar. To have an opportunity to see how  classicplays sit in conversation with brand new ones is so exciting, and this festivalof writing is something we want to do again and again, bigger and even better.During the festival we experimented with different performance spaces and found that there’s so muchmore to play with than just a traditional stage. The Globe’s ‘Tiring House’(where you would put on your ‘attire’ before a performance) makes a beautifullyintimate and immediate playing space that created a ‘pop-up’ element to ourfirst new writing festival. So, watch this space, and lots of other spacesaround the building. If you’re a writer, here are a fewthings to bear in mind:One of the exciting things thatwriters find here is that the Globe theatre demands writing that is truly active, epicand democratic. The audience can be your biggest supporter or yourharshest critic: roughly half of a Globe audience is standing, and they’ve only paid five pounds, so if they don’t like something, they can – and do –leave!The Globe invites live and directcommunication with its audience. It also responds brilliantly to declarationsof huge shifts in space and time – think of Antony and Cleopatra where we movebetween Egypt and Rome again and again so swiftly, with nothing more than adifferent set of characters coming on to tell us that we have changed continent.And asimagination bodies forthThe formsof things unknown, the poet’s penTurns themto shapes and gives to airy nothingA localhabitation and a name.-  A Midsummer Night’s DreamThespace is the concept. Thedramaturgy and structure of the play can be inspired by the necessity andparameters of the stage as much as the narrative that drives it forward. Thereare no sets, no amplified sound, no black outs – it’s a space that is completely sharedwith play, player and audience. And above us all is the sky. It’s a vertical aswell as horizontal space. It’s mythic and domestic. It’s a tabula rasa that allowsfor an experiment in form as much as content, and that is a challenge our writerssay they love to rise to.Although Shakespeare himself haspopped up in one or two of our new plays over the years, he’s not in himselfthe most interesting subject matter. Shakespeare wrote about Kings andQueens, faeries and myths, fools and twins, but what he really wrote aboutwas the human condition. We want to find our new Shakespeares. Writerswith big ideas that speak to a contemporary audience. Howto develop a play for Shakespeare’s GlobeWe don’t accept unsolicited scripts,mainly because we’re not looking for finished, polished plays. Instead wewant to support writers as you develop your plays bespoke to ourplayhouses.If you’re a writer with an idea for the Globe please don’t spendyour precious free time writing something without being paid forit! Instead send us the pitch, invite us to your shows, or rehearsed readings,or send us scripts you’ve written in the past, but please do not send us your new plays written for the Globe. Our space is full of ‘airynothing’ that invites you to speak to it and to fill it with your imagination;all we need is you, your poet’s pen and your big idea.If you would like to invite us to see your work performed please email us on literary@shakespearesglobe.com. The subject line should read: Invitation/Pitch (New Writing).Building photography by Clive Sherlock Emilia and Dark Night of the Soul photography by Helen Murray  -- source link
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