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Episode details

Radio 4,3 mins

Emma Rice: The Globe made a mistake in offering me the job

Front Row

Available for over a year

When Emma Rice was announced as the new artistic director of Shakespeare鈥檚 Globe theatre in January 2016 it was seen as a bold and exciting move. The theatre, known for recreating Shakespearean era staging, had deliberately head hunted a director known for modern and rule-breaking productions that attracted young audiences. And she had also confessed to finding a lot of Shakespeare quite difficult and impenetrable. So when the board announced in October 2016, only six months into the post that she鈥檇 be leaving, it was clear that something had gone very wrong. In a statement at the time Neil Constable, the CEO of Shakespeare鈥檚 Globe, said: 鈥淭he Globe was reconstructed as a radical experiment to explore the conditions within which Shakespeare and his contemporaries worked, and we believe this should continue to be the central tenet of our work. Whilst the realisation of Emma鈥檚 vision has been a vital part of our continuing experimentation as a theatre, we have now concluded that a predominant use of contemporary sound and lighting technology will not enable us to optimise further experimentation in our unique theatre spaces and the playing conditions which they offer.鈥

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