15 August 2022
In the summer of 2012, as part of the London Olympic Games' Cultural Olympiad and the World Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare's Globe hosted the hugely successful Globe to Globe Festival. This unprecedented six-week event saw companies from across the world perform at Shakespeare's Globe in over 30 different languages.
10 of these performances are now available exclusively on Drama Online from Bloomsbury Digital Resources. Further films will launch in 2023 and 2024, growing to a full collection of 30 filmed performances.
The Shakespeare's Globe to Globe Festival on Screen 1 collection will support the study and teaching of Shakespeare's plays. Where the festival brought these global theatre performances to the London stage, this digital collection will make them accessible to a wider global audience. All the films will have audio in their original language alongside fully translated English subtitles.
Margaret Bartley, Editorial Director, Bloomsbury Publishing, said: “We are delighted to bring this unique collection onto our educational platform Drama Online in partnership with Shakespeare'sGlobe. A global community of students and scholars will experience Shakespeare performed by theatre companies from across the world, bringing their own theatrical traditions and interpretations to his work. This new collection exemplifies Bloomsbury’s strategic investment in creating dynamic, diverse and authoritative digital resources for universities and schools everywhere.”
The festival saw more than 100,000 people attend performances of 37 productions of Shakespeare's plays performed in 37 different languages. A clear and moving demonstration of the universality of Shakespeare, the impact on attracting a new and diverse audience was significant, with the vast majority of the total audience being first-time visitors to Shakespeare's Globe.
This first collection includes the following performances. More information on the theatre groups behind each performance is available on Drama Online.
- Antony and Cleopatra (Turkish)
- Coriolanus (Japanese)
- Hamlet (Lithuanian)
- Henry VIII (Castilian Spanish)
- The Merchant of Venice (Hebrew)
- Much Ado About Nothing (French)
- Richard II (Palestinian Arabic)
- The Tempest (Bangla)
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Shona)
- The Winter's Tale (Yoruba)
Shakespeare's Globe to Globe Festival on Screen 1 will be available via two models: a one-time ‘perpetual access’ payment or via an annual subscription.