In November 2014 Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre launched its new video on-demand platform. Emma Draper provides an overview of the service that now offers more than 50 titles to view.
About the author: Emma Draper is the Press & PR Manager at the Globe Theatre. Telephone: 020 7902 1491 Email: emma.d@shakespearesglobe.com
In early November, Shakespeare’s Globe became the first theatre in the world to offer its own dedicated video-on-demand platform, Globe Player - https://globeplayer.tv/. Over 50 productions are currently available to stream or download, and we will continue to add to the collection – The Duchess of Malfi starring Gemma Arterton, Lucy Bailey’s spectacularly harrowing Titus Andronicus and Samuel Adamson’s joyous celebration of Purcell’s London, Gabriel, are all still to come in the next few months.
A passion for making Shakespeare’s astonishing plays as widely accessible as possible is in the Globe’s DNA. The cheap ‘groundling’ tickets were a cornerstone of Sam Wanamaker’s vision of the reconstructed Globe back in 1997, and to this day we offer hundreds of standing tickets to each and every performance for just £5. In our beautiful ‘wooden O’ on the side of the Thames, hundreds of thousands of people a year see world-class Shakespeare for the price of a sandwich, just a few feet away from the actors. Since 2007, we’ve also been extending our reach beyond London’s Bankside, taking touring productions out into the world in the pared-down, fleet-of-foot style of Renaissance touring theatre (Shakespeare’s own company roamed widely around Northern Europe, taking his plays to eager audiences in Frankfurt, Vienna, Prague, Riga and beyond). Our wildly popular tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream recently finished in Beijing, having played fifteen cities in seven countries across Russia and Asia. Our worldwide tour of Hamlet continues its madcap dash across the earth – at the time of writing the company is travelling from Brazil to Venezuela. They have visited 63 countries since 23 April 2014. All over the world, we have found an enormous appetite for Shakespeare – and particularly Shakespeare the way the Globe does it: allowing the plays to speak for themselves rather than cluttering them with concept; letting those extraordinary stories simply unfold on a big open stage, without elaborate sets or props; always striving to make even the most complex, bombastic speeches intelligible and human.
Stephen Fry as Malvolio in Shakespeare's Globe production of Twelfth Night in 2012 (image: Simon Annand).
For the past five years, we’ve captured dozens of Globe productions on film for DVD and cinema release. We sell DVDs all over the world, and last year we distributed films of our 2012 productions to cinemas in eleven countries. On the day of its UK release, our Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry was the fifth most successful film in the national marketplace. While most British arts institutions are currently ramping up their digital offerings, there is sometimes a bit of fretful muttering about ‘cannibalising’ live audiences. But our experience has been that offering our productions on film is actually diversifying and internationalising awareness of the Globe and its work – and we still continue to average 95% capacity for our Shakespeares in our 1,500-person capacity outdoor theatre every summer. Globe Player can give Shakespeare enthusiasts who aren’t based in the UK the opportunity to see Globe shows they would otherwise miss, engage brand new audiences who wouldn’t usually consider attending a theatre production, and allow die-hard Globe fans to revisit productions they saw and loved here on Bankside. The films also open access to our work to those patrons for whom a visit to the theatre may have become impossible. It’s our hope that local patrons who have been forced to stop attending performances in person as a result of age or ill health will reconnect with Shakespeare’s plays in their own homes thanks to this technology.
Eyebrows have also been raised about whether or not the live theatre experience can actually be fully represented on film. There are various aspects of seeing a play at the Globe – particularly if one is standing in the yard – that are incredibly special and unique and resistant to digital capture. This summer the groundlings found themselves sprinkled with wine by tribunes, jostled by a rowdy hunt scene and co-opted into celebrations for the Roman feast of Lupercalia. One extremely lucky audience member received a kiss from Eve Best’s mischievous Cleopatra each show. These are moments that are inherently and unavoidably live. But there are many other things about the Globe experience that do lend themselves wonderfully to film. The circular galleries and thrust stage mean that the audience is visible from almost every angle; the gasps, laughter and applause of spectators are inevitably part of the finished films and help to imbue them with the raucous, exuberant spirit of the Globe. We also work with some very skilled production teams to capture as much as we can of the full Globe experience – the acoustics created by the alchemical geometry of the space and the great open roof, the sweep of the expansive oak stage, the summer skies deepening and darkening above the heads of the groundlings.
Gemma Arterton as Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost at the Globe in 2007 (Photo: John Haynes)
In its first month, Globe Player has attracted over 60,000 unique users from all over the world. Roughly two thirds of the traffic to our main website comes from the UK; by contrast, the biggest single chunk of traffic to Globe Player comes from the United States. A list of the top ten countries where traffic originates includes China, Japan and Russia. In total, we have had visitors from 164 different countries. These statistics lend further credence to the (increasingly firmly established) proposition that Shakespeare’s plays still resonate incredibly powerfully across huge linguistic and geographical distances. As we continue to expand our international touring activities, we hope that our relationships with audiences and other theatre-makers around the world will also be strengthened by the seamless online access to our previous work we’re now able to provide.
As well as paid content (all our films are available to rent or buy), Globe Player also hosts a fantastic wealth of material gathered by actors Dan Poole and Giles Terera while making their extraordinary film Muse of Fire. Dan and Giles travelled the world in a clapped-out car, interviewing some of the world’s most famous and respected actors, directors and academics about what it means to read, perform and write about Shakespeare’s work, in an epic effort to demystify and illuminate Shakespeare’s work for everyone. For the first time, full-length footage of every single one of their encounters – from Jude Law at Elsinore to Bonnie Greer in London, from Baz Lurhmann in Hollywood to Mark Rylance in Stratford – will be made available for free. We want Globe Player to be an educational resource for school and university students as much as an entertainment platform, and we hope that the mix of young stars like Tom Hiddleston and seasoned academics like Harold Bloom will offer something for every age range.
When we launched Globe Player in November, we really didn’t know what to expect. It’s been heartening to watch the huge enthusiasm of the public and the media for the project, and to see such significant visitor and viewer figures so early in its life.