Shakespeare's Globe announces schedule for 2007

Shakespeare's Globe announces schedule for 2007

SHAKESPEARE'S GLOBE 2007 season entitled "Renaissance and Revolution" has been announced - running from 4 May to 7 October 2007

(Public booking opens 12 Feb 2007)

OTHELLO
By William Shakespeare
from 4 May to 19 Aug 2007
The republic of Venice employs Othello, a self-made man and a Moor, to defend its overseas territories against the Turks. But for all his military success, Othello remains an outsider in the city, an object of racism, envy and mistrust. As the Turkish threat gathers and Venetian forces are despatched to Cyprus, Iago, a junior officer secretly enraged by his lack of promotion, exploits Othello's ambiguous position and ingenuous nature, driving him into a passionate and uncontrollable jealousy.
(**The production will employ Renaissance staging, costume and music.)

IN EXTREMIS
by Howard Brenton
Returns for a short 2 weks run from 15 to 26 May 2007
A new spirit of philosophical and religious enquiry is growing in 12th-century France. In its vanguard is the brilliant Peter Abelard. When he starts an affair with his student Heloise, his conservative enemies find just the pretext they need to discredit him. In so doing they start a war of ideas that can only involve that arch-priest of medieval mysticism and austerity, Bernard of Clairvaux.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
By William Shakespeare
from 2 Jun to 6 Oct 2007
Portia, a wealthy heiress of Belmont, sets her suitors a challenge. He who wins it will win her hand; those who lose it will lose her hand and much more. In Venice, city of consumption, speculation and debt, Bassanio borrows money from Antonio to finance his attempt. Antonio, in turn, takes out a loan from the moneylender Shylock. The loan will be repaid when Antonio's ships return to the city. If they should fail and the money cannot be paid Antonio shall give to Shylock a pound of his own flesh. And they do fail. And Shylock will have his 'bond'.
(***The production will employ Renaissance staging, costume and music)

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
By William Shakespeare
from 1 Jul to 7 Oct 2007
Self-denial is in fashion at the court of Navarre where the young King and three of his courtiers solemnly forswear all pleasures in favour of serious study. But the Princess of France and her all-too-lovely entourage have other ideas and it isn't long before young love, with its glad eyes, hesitations and embarrassments, has broken every self-imposed rule of the all-male 'academe'.
(***This production will employ Renaissance staging, costume and music.)

HOLDING FIRE!
by Jack Shepherd
from 28 Jul to 5 Oct 2007
England 1837: a country on the cusp of revolution. A young girl is propelled on a journey from a London slum to the servants' quarters of a great house, and from first love to murder. In her flight from authority she come across the Chartist William Lovett, a man striving to steer a middle course between the brutal coalition of Parliament and Industry and the angry forces gathering against it. But can his rational, moderate voice be heard above the din of government militias on one side and the roaring militancy of Feargus O'Conor on the other?

WE, THE PEOPLE
from 2 Sep - 5 Oct 2007.
It is 1787 and the frail government of the recently independent United States of America, menaced by the powers of old Europe and reeling from internal rebellion, is suffering a crisis of identity. What sort of country should America be? Who should govern it? Who belongs in it? Throughout a long, humid, Philadelphia summer, a group of able and passionate men force themselves into one room to argue out the guiding principles of the new nation. What they came up with proves to be one of the most important - and radical - democratic experiments of the last 250 years. We, The People forges a vivid drama out of the surviving speeches, letters and official documents from that historic moment. Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, George Washington and many of the other founding fathers, came together at a moment of crisis and created the constitution which the United States still lives within today. We, The People, is a recreation of what they did.

Further detail will be announced by Artistic Director, Dominic Dromgoole at a press Conference on Tuesday 6 Feb 2007.