Shakespeare’s Globe announce Sam Wanamaker Playhouse 10th Anniversary Season
‘There’s magic in the web of it’
Othello
Marking a decade since the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse opened, Shakespeare’s Globe is thrilled to announce the 10th Anniversary Season, running from November 2023 to April 2024. Illuminated by over 100 beeswax candles, the Playhouse is an archetype of the Jacobean indoor theatre for which plays like Shakespeare’s Othello and The Duchess of Malfi were written and performed
- Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts runs from 10 November – 28 January, adapted and directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins.
- Ola Ince returns to Shakespeare’s Globe to direct Shakespeare’s Othello, running from 19 January – 13 April.
- Rachel Bagshawdirects John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi,ten years after it opened the first Sam Wanamaker Playhouse season in 2014, running from17 February – 14 April.
Christmas
- A new version of Hansel and Gretel by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage runs from 8 December – 7 January in the Globe Theatre, directed by Nick Bagnall.
Special Events
- Burnt at the Stake, or The Whole of the Truth, a special night of new writing, plays in the Globe Theatre on 13 October.
- The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse hosts new writing company HighTide’s Ghost Stories by Candlelight on 23 – 25 November.
- Tim Crouch makes his Globe debut with his acclaimed solo show I, Malvolio, running 30 November – 9 December.
Michelle Terry, Artistic Director, says: This winter, we’re so proud and excited to be celebrating the 10th anniversary of our unique and incredible Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. For over a decade now, the warm embrace of over a hundred beeswax candles has transformed stories and transported artists and audiences to worlds elsewhere via the most compelling and necessary of plays. And this year will be no different as we put the drama of the domestic right at the heart of this candlelit imaginarium. As the nights draw in, and the days get darker, we hope these beguiling and bewitching dramas will charm, inspire, and nourish as you step into the candlelight to celebrate 10 years of our wonderful Sam Wanamaker Playhouse!
For the first time, the Globe will stage a play by Henrik Ibsen, one of the most influential dramatists of all time. A searing exploration of family secrets and forbidden desire, Ghosts runs from 10 November 2023, until 28 January 2024. Its depiction of incest, infection, and euthanasia caused a scandal when it first premiered, and now, director Joe HillGibbins, in his Globe debut, brings the first modern tragedy to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Joe Hill Gibbins is a British theatre and opera director. His directing credits include The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (Almeida Theatre) and Edward II (National Theatre), The Marriage of Figaro and Powder Her Face (ENO). Between 2007 and 2013 he was Resident Director and later Deputy Artistic Director at the Young Vic Theatre, where his credits include The Changeling, The Glass Menagerie, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and A Respectable Wedding. Other directing credits include The Village Bike, Bliss, Family Plays: The Good Family & The Khomenko Family Chronicles, A Girl In A Car With A Man (Royal Court Theatre); The Girlfriend Experience (Royal Court Theatre and Drum Plymouth, Young Vic); and A Thought In Three Parts (Battersea Arts Centre). Ghosts will be designed by Rosanna Vize.
Ola Ince directs Shakespeare’s Othello running from 19 January until 13 April 2024, following her seminal 2021 production of Romeo and Juliet in the Globe Theatre. Ola debuts in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse with Shakespeare’s blistering tragedy of unrestrained jealousy and manipulation, confronting the destructive impact of racism and misogyny on reputation and community. Ola Ince is a theatre, film, and opera director. She has most recently directed Once On This Island (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre). Ola was an Artistic Associate at the Royal Court Theatre from 2018-2022, and Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith and Theatre Royal Stratford East in 2016. Other theatre credits include Christmas in the Sunshine (Unicorn Theatre); Heart (Minetta Lane Theatre, NYC); Is God Is & Poet in da Corner (Royal Court Theatre); The Knife of Dawn (Royal Opera House); Viral (Headlong Theatre and Century Films); Appropriate (Donmar); The Convert, Dutchman (Young Vic); and Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 (Gate Theatre).
Ten years after opening the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in 2014, John Webster’s timeless revenge tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, returns to London’s only indoor candlelit theatre, running from 17 February until 14 April 2024. Director Rachel Bagshaw makes her Globe debut with this anniversary production of Webster’s violent tale of misogyny and deceit. Rachel is a stage director and incoming Artistic Director at the Unicorn Theatre. Her recent theatre credits include A Dead Body in Taos (Bristol Old Vic/Wilton’s Music Hall), Augmented (Royal Exchange/Told by an Idiot) and Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales for Unicorn Theatre Online. Other theatre credits include The Bee in Me and Aesop’s Fables (Unicorn Theatre); Midnight Movie (Royal Court Theatre); The Shape of the Pain (China Plate/Edinburgh Fringe/BAC/UK Tour); Resonance at the Still Point of Change (Unlimited Festival, South Bank Centre); The Rhinestone Rollers and Just Me, Bell (Graeae). Film credits include Let Loose (Unicorn Theatre Online/ENB) and Where I Go (When I Can’t be Where I Am) (BBC/China Plate).
On 13 October, Burnt at the Stake, or The Whole of the Truth will anonymously showcase writers premiering new work. This evening of storytelling revolves around one provocation to these writers: If no-one knew you had said it, what would you say? If you could tell ‘the whole of the truth’ what would you tell? This celebration of bold new writing in the
Globe Theatre is co-curated by Hannah Khalil (Writer, Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights; The Fir Tree, Globe) and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (Writer, Emilia, Globe; Mum, Soho). Globe Resident Associate Directors Naeem Hayat (Associate Director, The Comedy of Errors, Globe; Assistant Director, King Lear, Globe) and Indiana Lown-Collins (Associate Director, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe; Director, The Solid Life of Sugar Water, Orange Tree;) will codirect.
Celebrated new writing company HighTide bring Ghost Stories by Candlelight to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse from 23-25 November. Contemporary ghost stories and haunting folk music from the ‘Witch Counties’ of East Anglia will be directed by Elayce Ismail, and written by Kelly Jones, Shamser Sinha and Nicola Werenowska, with music and songs by Georgia Shackleton. Ghost Stories by Candlelight is a HighTide production, in association with Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, Harlow Playhouse and Shakespeare’s Globe. Recent productions include Kabul Goes Pop! and When The Long Trick’s Over (2022 UK Tours). Other productions include The Last Woodwose, Collapsible, Hey Diddle Diddle!, Luke Wright: Logan Dankworth, Pops, Rust, Status, The Old House, Since U Been Gone, Pink Lemonade (Aldeburgh Festival); and The Trick (Bush Theatre).
World-renowned artist Tim Crouch makes his Globe debut in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse this winter, with his acclaimed solo show I, Malvolio, running from 30 November – 9 December. An hilarious and often unsettling rant from an actor adrift in front of an audience, I, Malvolio re-imagines Twelfth Night from the point of view of its most
notoriously abused steward. Part abject clown, part theatre-hating disciplinarian, Malvolio asks his audience to explore the pleasure we take in other people’s suffering. A story of lost dignity, prudery, practical jokes and bullying, this oneman act of storytelling alchemy draws us deep into the madness of Shakespeare’s classic comedy, suitable for ages 11+. Following the hugely successful I, Caliban, I, Peaseblossom and I, Banquo, I, Malvolio premiered at the Brighton Festival in 2010 and has since toured throughout the world. It is designed by Olivier award-winning Graeme Gilmour and was commissioned by Brighton Festival.
Playing in the open-air Globe Theatre, Hansel and Gretel runs from 8 December 2023 until 7 January 2024, the new stage production of Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s epic version of The Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale. Directed by Nick Bagnall (Love’s Labour’s Lost; Two Gentlemen of Verona, Globe) and filled with music, magic, songs and a sprinkling of hope, Hansel and Gretel is aimed at everyone aged 5+. Simon and Nick return to collaborate at the Globe for the first time since The Last Days of Troy in 2014. Nick’s other work for the Globe includes Edward II, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Henry VI parts 1, 2 and 3, The Death of King Arthur, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Nick was the Associate Director of the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse from 2014–2019 where his directing credits included Our Lady of Blundellsands, Sweeney Todd, A Clockwork Orange, The Big I Am, The Conquest of the South Pole, Romeo & Juliet, The Odyssey: Missing Presumed Dead, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Electric Hills.