The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and produces around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Newcastle upon Tyne and on tour across the UK and internationally.
Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor, film producer, and director. A Shakespeare interpreter, he first achieved success onstage at the Royal National Theatre.
Richard Burbage was an English stage actor, widely considered to have been one of the most famous actors of the Globe Theatre and of his time. In addition to being a stage actor, he was also a theatre owner, entrepreneur, and painter. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama. Burbage was a business associate and friend to William Shakespeare.
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on land owned by Thomas Brend and inherited by his son, Nicholas Brend and grandson Sir Matthew Brend, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed by an Ordinance issued on 6 September 1642.
The Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse in Shoreditch, just outside the City of London. It was the second permanent theatre ever built in England, after the Red Lion, and the first successful one. Built by actor-manager James Burbage, near the family home in Holywell Street, The Theatre is considered the first theatre built in London for the sole purpose of theatrical productions. The Theatre's history includes a number of important acting troupes including the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which employed Shakespeare as actor and playwright. After a dispute with the landlord, the theatre was dismantled and the timbers used in the construction of the Globe Theatre on Bankside.
The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 986 seats on three levels.
Shakespeare's Globe is the complex housing a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse associated with William Shakespeare, in the London Borough of Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames. The original theatre was built in 1599, destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and then demolished in 1644. The modern Globe Theatre reconstruction is an academic approximation based on available evidence of the 1599 and 1614 buildings. It is considered quite realistic, though contemporary safety requirements mean that it accommodates only 1,400 spectators compared to the original theatre’s 3,000.
Joseph Marcell is a British actor and comedian best known for his role as Geoffrey Butler, the butler on the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from September 1990, until it ended in May 1996. Born in Saint Lucia, he moved to the United Kingdom when he was nine years old, and grew up in Peckham, South London. Marcell lives in Banstead, Surrey.
Sir David Mark Rylance Waters is an English actor, theatre director, and playwright. He was the first artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, between 1995 and 2005. His film appearances include Prospero's Books (1991), Angels and Insects (1995), Institute Benjamenta (1996), and Intimacy (2001). Rylance won the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies (2015). Rylance played the title role in Steven Spielberg's The BFG (2016), a live-action film adaptation of the children's book by Roald Dahl, and appeared in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017), based on the British evacuation in World War II. He appeared as James Halliday in Spielberg's 2018 film Ready Player One, based on the novel of the same name.
Peter Oswald is an English playwright. He is married to the poet Alice Oswald, with whom he has three children. They live in Devon, South West England.
The Old Globe is a professional theatre company located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It produces about 15 plays and musicals annually in summer and winter seasons. Plays are performed in three separate theatres in the complex, which is collectively called the Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts:
Emily "Eve" Best is an English stage and screen actress and director, known for her television roles as Dr. Eleanor O'Hara in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie (2009–13), First Lady Dolley Madison in the American Experience television special (2011), and Monica Chatwin in the BBC miniseries The Honourable Woman (2014). She also played Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech.
Jamie Parker is an English actor and singer, best known for his role as Harry Potter in the original cast for the West End play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, for which he received an Olivier Award for Best Actor. He also received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play as a member of the original Broadway version.
Thousands of performances of William Shakespeare's plays have been staged since the end of the 16th century. While Shakespeare was alive, many of his greatest plays were performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men and King's Men acting companies at the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres. Among the actors of these original performances were Richard Burbage, Richard Cowley, and William Kempe.
Kirsty Besterman is a British actress of the stage and screen. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art graduating in 2002.
Richard Madden is a Scottish actor and producer. Born and raised near Glasgow, in Renfrewshire, he made his screen debut as a child actor and stage debut whilst a student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. In 2007, he toured with Shakespeare's Globe company as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, a role he would reprise in the West End in 2016.
Michelle Terry is an Olivier award-winning English actress and writer, known for extensive work for Shakespeare’s Globe, RSC, National Theatre and television work, notably writing and starring in Sky's The Café. Terry will take up the role of artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe in April 2018.
The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is an indoor theatre forming part of Shakespeare's Globe, along with the Globe Theatre on Bankside, London. Built making use of 17th-century plans for an indoor theatre, the playhouse recalls the layout and style of the Blackfriars Theatre, although it is not an exact reconstruction. Its shell was built during the construction of the Shakespeare's Globe complex, notable for the reconstruction of the open-air Globe Theatre of the same period. The shell was used as a space for education workshops and rehearsals until enough money was raised to complete the playhouse. It opened in January 2014, named after Sam Wanamaker, the leading figure in the Globe's reconstruction.
Nell Gwynn is a play by the British playwright Jessica Swale, begun in 2013 and premiering at Shakespeare's Globe from 19 September to 17 October 2015. It deals with the life of Nell Gwynn, mistress of Charles II, and her part in the theatre of the 17th century. Gugu Mbatha-Raw played the title role in the production debut.
