New Globe Director Will Allow Cast to Choose Roles and Audience to Choose Plays

According to The Guardian, Michelle Terry, the new artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe wants to dismantle theatre hierarchies moving forward by giving more power to the casts and audiences of the play produced there.

Terry announced a new season opening with Hamlet and As You Like It, where the cast members will be able to decide who plays whom. Similarly, the plays The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night will go on tour, allowing some audiences to choose which show they see that night.

Terry explains her decision of wanting to dismantle these hierarchies by saying, "It is unfair that everything gets dumped on the director's shoulders and actually it is a really collaborative process, especially for our theatre, which is one of the most democratic and egalitarian spaces that we've got."

Other productions in the summer 2018 season include Othello, with André Holland in the lead role alongside Sir Mark Rylance, the Globe's founding artistic director, as Iago. Rylance's wife, Claire van Kampen, will direct. The season also includes The Two Noble Kinsmen, directed by Barrie Rutter; The Winter's Tale, directed by Blanche McIntyre; and Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Nick Bagnall.

Terry has also promised diversity across the organization, beginning with a 50-50 gender split across the season.

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