The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has announced plans for reopening this summer with the opening of a new outdoor venue in Stratford-Upon-Avon, The Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Garden Theatre.
The Garden Theatre will host student, community, and semi-professional performances throughout the Summer. The RSC hopes that this reopening will be a “symbol of regeneration,” according to their artistic director Gregory Doran.
The RSC has been in part able to reopen due to a low interest loan of £19.4 million from the UK government.
The Garden Theatre will mark its opening with a run of Phillip Breen’s The Comedy of Errors, which will run from 13 July to 26 September. A new performance titled All Mirth and No Matter will be available to watch on 23 July. The show features the creative responses of the RSC’s Next Generation ACT to Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
Furthermore, the RSC will host open rehearsal sessions for Henry VI, Part One, allowing online audiences to view and experience the company’s warm up sessions and rehearsal routines.
Speaking to The Guardian, Doran expressed his hopes for the new venue, saying “I think it is going to be comfortable, I think it will be acoustically good … I think it will be a joy and a symbol of regeneration and coming out of this pandemic. It is the power of being able to come back and congregate and feel safe and say yes, OK, let’s go back inside now.”
Tickets for the RSC’s upcoming shows are available online.
Words by Elizabeth Sorrell.
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Image: Andy Williams // © RSC