Join us for The Complete Walk to mark the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s Death
We’re delighted to announce our plans to mark the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
The Complete Walk
Over the weekend of 23 - 24 April 2016, specially created short films of each of Shakespeare’s plays will be shown on screens along the banks of the Thames from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge. The films will be free and accessible for all, with each of the 37 screens showing one film on a loop for the duration of the weekend.
Featuring some of the UK’s best-known actors, the films will be shot on location, capturing the astonishing breadth of Shakespeare’s global imagination, from Cleopatra beside the Pyramids to Shylock in Venice’s Jewish ghetto, or Hamlet on the rocks of Elsinore. The films will be directed by a selection of talented young directors and each will include fresh material, interwoven with Globe on Screen titles, footage from the BFI’s Silent Shakespeare films and newly created animation.
“Shakespeare spent half his life in London, wrote all his plays there, and presented them all beside the Thames…We think it is suitable and fitting that the huge range of his work should be celebrated 400 years after his death in a big free public event, utilising the very latest technology, along a public walkway beside the same dirty old river, so rich with history. The ability to make these films in so many different countries, and to show them in an equal number, will be a further celebration of Shakespeare’s astonishing reach into the world.” - Dominic Dromgoole, Artistic Director
For more info on The Complete Walk, visit our website.
Hamlet
The anniversary weekend will also celebrate the return of the unprecedented world tour of Hamlet, which will play on the Globe stage for four final performances, after an extraordinary two years performing in every country in the world.
Our two-year Hamlet world tour set out on its remarkable journey on 23 April 2014, the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. Its company of travelling players has performed in all corners of the world – in theatres, temples and public squares – and in October to a Syrian audience in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan. This unparalleled journey has been the first foreign company in 23 years to present a full play in Somaliland, drawn crowds of 3,000 for one show in Sudan, performed in the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and has been granted UNESCO patronage for the tour’s engagement with local communities and promotion of cultural education.
Performances of Hamlet will be as follows:
Saturday 23 April: 2.00pm and 7.30pm
Sunday 24 April: 12.00pm and 5.00pmPriority Booking opens for Friends & Patrons of Shakespeare’s Globe on 23 November, with Public Booking opening on 30 November. To become a Friend or Patron of Shakespeare’s Globe, click here.
