Gender and racial equality in casting at Shakespeare’s Globe, new director says

Productions at Shakespeare’s Globe will feature gender and race blind casting and the seasons will include equal roles for men and women, incoming artistic director Michelle Terry has said.

The actress will take over from Emma Rice, who is departing the role at the end of the 2017/18 winter season after a brief and controversial tenure.

Terry confirmed that, when she takes over, productions will feature no amplified sound and no imposed lighting rig, saying it was a decision that had been made before she was offered the job.

Rice’s use of artificial sound and light, as well as her non-traditional approach to Shakespeare, was one of the most divisive elements of her time in the role.

Terry, whose performance as Henry V at the Open Air theatre in Regent’s Park was critically lauded, said of gender blind casting: “The whole season will be 50/50 and that is not just small parts played by women or small parts played by men.

“Across the season the body of work will be equal amounts for male or female, it will be gender blind, race blind, disability blind.

“I have benefited from that being a possibility and I don’t think when I played Henry V the context we were at with current affairs – we had Brexit, we had the Chilcot inquiry coming out, we had women on the front lines, Theresa May was Prime Minister, these were all things that served that play, me being a woman was the last thing on people’s mind.

She added that equal parts for men and women is “a massive part of this building’s mission,” pointing out that Rice had already achieved a 47/53 gender split.

Terry said she will continue to act in productions while she serves as artistic director but has no plans to direct plays.

She said: “I’m not going to direct at all. I think it’s a skill that I don’t have, I think it’s a particular skill and my passion is acting.”

She continued: “I don’t think I will be in a lot, it’s such a muscular space that to sustain a certain amount of shows it’s really hard to work the space, so I think I would love to be in at least one a season, summer season and winter season, and then we will see.

One of the plays during her first season in charge will be a new work by female playwright about the so-called “dark lady of the sonnets”, Emilia Bassano.

Terry said: “We are offering up to a writer the chance to research it.

“I won’t say the person that I’ve got just in case she changes her mind about writing it but once I had the conversation with her she went and did her own bit of research, and she said it sounds like Shakespeare In Love but it’s an Italian Jewish lady rather than Gwyneth Paltrow, so that sounds quite exciting.”

Terry said the decision to revert back to the tradition of no artificial sound and light was featured in her job description.

She said she would encourage her directors to push the limits of their imagination and then ask them to “unplug” their ideas, to explore what can be done without electricity.

Asked if she thought the theatre had lost its way at the time, she said: “I don’t think it had lost its way, I had just given birth and I think I felt at my most creative, and I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t know where to go with that creativity but I know Shakespeare is my passion, so I think it was an offer less about what had gone on and more about where it was going.

“I think maybe I would have written the letter even if Emma was staying, I wanted to be part of the artistic conversation at this building because this is the building that I love.”