Guys, I cannot get over how amazing it was to see two shows at The Globe! As a Theatre major who’s been studying Shakespeare for years, it was so remarkably cool to be in an exact replica of his theatre from the 16th/17th centuries. It has always been a dream to see any show at The Globe, but getting to see
1-Mother Courage and Her Children, a BRECHT show (one of my favorite playwrights)
AND
2-A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the first Shakespeare show I ever acted in, was such a DREAMMM!
Truly, both of these shows were some of the best theatre I’ve ever seen. Being in The Globe is a theatre experience like no other. Thrust, Blackbox, and Proscenium theatres all meet, which gives the ultimate intimate theatrical experience. With actors entering through the audience, communicating with AND even bringing audience members on stage, these were such special experiences.
I already knew how the theatre was situated, so that wasn’t new, but being groundlings was! At both shows, our group stood up against the stage and watched the show standing. This scared me at first because I was afraid I would get tired, but I actually really enjoyed it. Watching theatre that close was magical; getting right up next to the action kept me enthralled and deepened the experience. The shows differed from anything we would see in contemporary America just because of how real everything is. At Midsummer, for example, the cast was on stage and in the audience 30 minutes before the show even started. They were talking to audience members and even bringing some of us up on stage to dance/perform-
which- sidenote, I technically had my Globe DEBUT?!?! Right before the show started, I got to go up on THE Globe stage and dance with the actor playing Nick Bottom! (full circle because I was Nick Bottom in high school!)
But anyways, The Globe has such a special performance technique that truly makes everyone there feel like one, which ended up becoming the ending theme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Overall, I think many of the performance techniques would have been similar in Shakespeare’s real Globe long ago, and that he would truly love the way his theatre is used and performed today!
-Erin
Theatre in London U of A 