In celebration of Shakespeare’s Birthday today (23 April), the Globe has teamed up with the BBC as part of BBC Art’s Culture in Quarantine project. BBC iPlayer will host A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016), and The Tempest (2013) from 23 April 2020, available free for over three months. Emma Rice’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream stars Ncuti Gatwa, best-known for Netflix’s ‘Sex Education’, and Jeremy Herrin’s The Tempest stars Roger Allam as Prospero and Colin Morgan.
The Globe’s ‘Shakespeare & Love in Isolation’ series will also launch on Shakespeare’s Birthday and sees artists, in times of solitude and from their place of sanctuary, sharing some of the greatest words ever written. The series includes Alfred Enoch, Athena Stevens, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Jenifer Toksvig, Kathryn Hunter, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Nadia Albina, Paul Ready, Roger Allam, Sandi Toksvig, Shubham Saraf, Sophie Stone, and Stephen Fry. The Guardian has partnered on the project to relaunch its Shakespeare Solo series, and Vivienne Westwood will be posting some of the new digital content on Instagram to help celebrate the Bard’s birthday.
To add to current free to stream films, The Globe will also be streaming the 90-minute Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank production Macbeth (2020). Macbeth was halted on the eve of the first integrated British Sign Language performance of the play. Over 33,000 students had seen the production but a further 15,000 had tickets and will not be able to see it in the theatre. Now the play, currently the most widely studied on the school curriculum, will be available for free on the Globe’s YouTube channel until the Government reopens schools. Macbeth will be available on the Globe’s YouTube channel from Monday 11 May at 7pm.
The podcast ‘Such Stuff’ will feature Michelle Terry interviewing the inimitable Peter Brook. Kathryn Hunter also features performing readings throughout the episode. BBC Radio 4’s programme Front Row will soon feature Alfred Enoch and Rebekah Murrell performing a scene from Romeo & Juliet, which was due to open the Globe’s Summer Season, directed by Ola Ince.
The Globe has just launched a new donation service ‘Text to Donate’. Supporters can now text GLOBE followed by their donation amount (up to £20) to 70460 to donate.