Web Analytics Made Easy - Statcounter

About Us

Shakespeare’s Globe is a world-renowned theatre, education centre, and cultural landmark on the bank of the River Thames in London.

About Shakespeare’s Globe

Founded by the pioneering American actor and director Sam Wanamaker, our site is home to two venues – the iconic open-air Globe Theatre (1997) and the candlelit indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (2014). We produce new productions (Shakespeare’s and new writing included) year-round across both venues. The Globe Theatre is a unique full-scale replica of Shakespeare’s original 1599 Elizabethan open-air theatre. Our indoor candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is an archetype of an indoor Jacobean theatre.

Many of our productions enjoy an extended life online through our video-on-demand service Globe Player, in cinemas across the UK, and on television. We are also a major venue for concerts and special events, and have produced many world premieres of new plays, several of which have gone on to enjoy success in the West End, on Broadway and beyond.

Our Education department has long been one of the most active in the UK. We offer a hugely diverse programme of workshops, public events, and, uniquely, university courses, research projects, scholarship and community projects. Our Guided Tour is award-winning, and our visitors also enjoy our on-site and online shop. The Swan Bar & Restaurant opens 7 days a week, also catering for large events in our UnderGlobe events space.

Shakespeare’s Globe explores Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre and Shakespeare and contemporary performance. We examine the context of his period while exploring how the plays speak to our current moment. Keeping Shakespeare relevant and ensuring everyone feels they have access to Shakespeare and his theatres underpins all our work with schools and universities and informs the experience offered to every visitor to the Globe site.

The Globe welcomed 23,000 school children to Macbeth for free, and 23,529 people watched our Anti-Racist Shakespeare webinars, curated by Director of Education for Higher Education & Research, Professor Farah Karim-Cooper. We launched the Shakespeare Centre London in partnership with King’s College, London and co-curated a packed-out Shakespeare and Race Festival. Our incredible Learning department ran 1,300 workshops for schools, a full programme of events for children every school holiday; host 120 young people every week for Globe Youth Theatre and created the first full-scale Globe family show, Midsummer Mechanicals.

The Globe is a unique organisation. Its wooden ‘O’ so meticulously and beautifully designed, transports us and connects us to 400-years of treasured history – providing illumination and inspiration for what the next centuries can hold. We create world-class theatre productions, supporting and nurturing the talent and craft of our remarkable cultural industry. All our work is inspired and informed by the unique historic playing conditions of our iconic theatres, our diverse programme of work harnesses the power of performance, cultivating intellectual curiosity and enlivening learning to make Shakespeare accessible for all.

Step into the story at Shakespeare’s Globe

About the Globe Today

Shakespeare’s Globe is an independent charity, year to year operating without any regular subsidy or Arts Council England funding. Any financial surplus generated by our activities is invested in the ongoing work of the Shakespeare Globe Trust, a registered educational and artistic charity supported by around 250 employees and over 400 freelancers (as of last year), large body of committed volunteers, an extensive membership scheme and generous contributions from a wide range of companies, charitable trusts and foundations, and private individuals throughout the world. As with the rest of the performing arts sector, we face ongoing financial challenges, yet continue to deliver creatively for our diverse audiences, and with major impact for our communities.

During the Covid-19 pandemic we received a critically sustaining Cultural Recovery Fund grant and loan from the UK Government which allowed us to survive the period of closure and retain many jobs. As we look to the next period of the charity’s history, we now look to recovering and rebuilding our revenue to historic levels.

Shakespeare’s Globe explores Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre and Shakespeare and contemporary performance.  We examine the context of his period while exploring how the plays speak to our current moment. Keeping Shakespeare relevant and ensuring everyone has access to Shakespeare and his theatres underpins  all our work with schools and universities and informs the experience offered to every visitor to the Globe site, shaping the way in which we present ourselves to the world.

Shakespeare’s Globe continues to go from strength to strength as a leading London theatre. Our winter season in the jewel-box Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is coming to a close having performed to over 71,000 visitors. Audiences enjoyed successful and celebrated performances of Henry V (co-production Headlong, Leeds Playhouse, and Royal & Derngate, Northampton), Titus Andronicus, The Winter’s Tale, and two new plays celebrating the festive season and the power of storytelling – The Fir Tree and Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights (co-production with Tamasha).

This year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Thanks to a private owner, Shakespeare’s Globe is delighted to be the custodian of one of the surviving copies, which is displayed in our main foyer throughout the year.  It is a significant wonder of the literary world without this collection, 18 of Shakespeare’s plays would have been lost forever including four well known and beloved plays: The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, and Macbeth. This summer, our season offers those four folio plays to audiences, along with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring our Artistic Director Michelle Terry as the mischievous Puck. Our first full-scale family show Midsummer Mechanicals (co-produced with Splendid Productions) will return this summer following receiving an Olivier nomination for ‘Best Family Show’.

At the start of this year, our ‘Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank’ production of The Tempest offered over 26,000 free tickets to London and Birmingham State Secondary school students, from schools with above average percentages of students eligible for Free School Meals. We also brought Shakespeare to Westminster Abbey with our special event ‘Shakespeare in the Abbey’, audiences explored the iconic sacred space for a promenade performance, as a cast of actors performed extracts from some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays and sonnets. 

Our award-winning Guided Tour offers visitors a brand-new walk-through exhibition space. Immersing visitors in the sights, sounds, and secrets of Shakespeare’s London, travelling through over 400-years of history. Reliving our most iconic shows with seasonally curated displays, visitors also have the chance to get ready for the stage with interactive costumes and props. Our expert Guides bring the thrilling story of our iconic wooden ‘O’ to life, hearing how the original 1599 theatre survived the plague, fire and political oppression and rose again in the 1990s as part of one man’s radical vision.

We continue to offer the most economically accessible ticket in London theatre with our £5 groundling ticket. For those unable to visit Bankside, we re-launched Globe Player (our streaming service). International visitors comprise 30% of our Summer Season audience, and we remain a top visitor destination, with our Guided Tours delivering on 320 days across the year. In 2022, we were for a time the only performing arts organisation with two theatres open and running several productions in repertoire.

Many fantastic projects find a home at the Globe, we are proud to have produced and hosted a live performance and recording of CBeebies’ take on Shakespeare’s As You Like It (broadcast to families over Easter on BBC and returning this summer with a new version of Twelfth Night), the 10th Anniversary of Open Iftar 2023 (part of Ramadan Festival 2023) inviting people from all faiths and none to join together during Ramadan, a Julius Caesar project supporting those in the prison system, and working with Compass Collective on a 6-month programme with young refugees. We opened our doors 24 hours a day to those on their pilgrimage to pay respects to Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, with over 30,000 people using our facilities. At the start of the year, we welcomed in 2022 with the nation as part of BBC One’s New Year’s Eve official countdown.

Uncompromising in our love of language and commitment to new writing, the Globe has produced over 43 new plays in its 25-year history, continuing to look for the epic and mythic stories that need to be told. We have produced many world premieres, several of which have gone on to enjoy success in the West End, Broadway and beyond such as the “extraordinarily rousing” Emilia. Most recently we produced I, Joan, from first time Globe writer Charlie Josephine, which left many feeling that “To see and hear it […] is to be part of a remaking of the stage, an explosion of new life.” And seeing out 2022, were two plays by our resident writer for the year, Hannah Khalil: Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights – played by a company of women of SWANA heritage, and our Christmas show, the climate-conscious re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Fir Tree, delighted the young and the young at heart with this “extra magical…. even slightly transgressive but no less cheerily irreverent” production.

Last year’s summer season featured 6 new productions, opening with a critically-acclaimed and popular Much Ado About Nothing (4* from Times, Telegraph, Evening Standard). Kathryn Hunter in the eponymous role for King Lear impressed with a 4* Guardian review, and The Tempest (directed by Globe Associate Artistic Director Sean Holmes) also received much praise (4* from Telegraph and Observer, and dubbed ‘brilliantly reimagined’ by the Evening Standard). Henry VIII received 5* from The Telegraph, and much-discussed new play I, Joan gained a wide range of positive reviews, including The Times 5*: ‘exciting…stirring…superbly engaging’), 4* Independent, and 5* What’s On Stage.  Our first full-scale family production Midsummer Mechanicals (co-production with Splendid Productions), received an Olivier nomination for the ‘Best Family Show’ category.

In 2022, we launched the Shakespeare Centre London in partnership with King’s College, London and co-curated a Shakespeare and Race Festival. Our impressive Education department ran 1,300 workshops for students, and 23,529 people watched our free Anti-Racist Shakespeare webinars.

Our Cause

We celebrate Shakespeare’s transformative impact on the world by conducting a radical theatrical experiment. Inspired and informed by the unique historic playing conditions of two beautiful iconic theatres, our diverse programme of work harnesses the power of performance, cultivates intellectual curiosity and excites learning to make Shakespeare accessible for all.

‘And let us … on your imaginary forces work’

Henry V, Prologue

Our Guiding Principles are:

  • Shakespeare for all.
  • Creating unique experiences had only at the Globe.
  • Sustainability of people, place, planet and pound.

Our 2022-2025 Strategic Objectives are:

  • Build our financial resilience.
  • Celebrate and champion the continues relevance of Shakespeare’s work through impactful, Globe inspired programming.
  • All at Shakespeare’s Globe take responsibility to create a diverse, inclusive and Anti-Racist organisation.
  • Develop our unique theatres.
  • By putting people first, enliven our culture and strengthen resilience making the Globe a great place to work.
  • Play our part in achieving climate justice.

Our Impact

From November 2022 to October 2023, we delivered over 600 public performances, welcoming over 675,000 visitors in total, with 470,000 theatregoers into our two theatres, and 96,000 new bookers to the Globe. Continuing our post-pandemic recovery, this year we have seen a 49% increase in theatregoers from 2022 and, across the 2023 Summer Season, we have welcomed the same number of audience members as Summer 2018.  International visitors contribute significantly to this increase, comprising 40% of our Summer Season audience. We remain a top visitor destination, with our Guided Tours delivered on 362 days across the year to over 170,000 visitors. Through the introduction in March 2023 of the ‘Globe Story’ exhibition and the development of themed tours, we continue to innovate our offer to grow our visitor base back to pre-pandemic numbers and position the Globe as a must-see attraction for new and returning visitors alike. Over the last 12 months Artistic Director Michelle Terry opened 8 new Shakespeare productions  (many of which enjoyed critical and audience acclaim) including Henry V (Headlong co-production, with Leeds Playhouse and Royal & Derngate, Northampton), The Winter’s Tale (the first production to traverse both the Globe and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse), Titus Andronicus, The Tempest (the 17th year of Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth and As You Like It. We continued our commitment to developing new writing with productions of Hakawatis (Tamasha co-production), The Fir Tree and Burnt at the Stake, a night of anonymous new work from 13 writers. For family audiences, our Olivier Award nominated production, Midsummer Mechanicals, returned for a second year to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, welcoming nearly 3000 families whilst BBC Cbeebies also returned to the Globe Theatre with a new version of Twelfth Night, which has been filmed for broadcast in 2024.

Last year marked the 25th Anniversary of the Royal opening of the Globe Theatre, and our £5 ticket, described by an audience member as “a brilliant commitment to making the best cultural experiences available to everyone, more important than ever”. In 2023, we continued celebrations, marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio with events including a lecture delivered by Professor Emma Smith and Twelfth Night: For One Night Only, a unique one-off performance recreating the way Shakespeare’s company would have performed the play – without rehearsals or access to the full script.

For those unable to visit Bankside, our video-on-demand platform Globe Player offers worldwide access to over 40 filmed productions, and our annual Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank production was streamed by 634 schools for free. Director of Education for Learning and Families, Lucy Cuthbertson welcomed over 22,000 school children to The Tempest for free as part of Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank (bringing the overall reach to 290,000 students over the lifetime of the project) and our incredible Education department ran 2300 workshops for students at the Globe or in school. In late 2022, we launched the Shakespeare Centre London in partnership with King’s College, London and co-curated a packed-out Shakespeare and Race Festival; while over 25,000 people have watched our Anti-Racist Shakespeare webinars, curated by Director of Education for Higher Ed & Research, Professor Farah Karim-Cooper.

Many other fantastic projects find a home at the Globe including Open Iftar, a community breaking of fast organised by Ramadan Tent Project, BSL-led cabaret event A Night In Sign, a Julius Caesar project supporting those in the prison system, and work with Compass Collective on a 6-month programme with young refugees.

The Future

There are six agreed strategic aims for the period 2023 to 2026 and the CEO will work closely with the Directorate in leading the organisation to achieve them:

  • Building and maintaining financial resilience.
  • Celebrating and championing the continued relevance of Shakespeare through impactful programming.
  • Whole organisational responsibility for creating a non-discriminatory and actively anti-racist culture.
  • Conservation, maintenance, development of our unique theatres, collections, and spaces.
  • A ‘people first’ approach to working culture.
  • Playing our part in climate justice.

The emphasis within all of these aims is on consolidation and growth; on balancing the need to generate and maintain long-term financial sustainability with upholding our values and delivering our Mission and Cause. Four new values have been written to support these strategic aims:

  • Inclusive
  • Innovative
  • Collaborative
  • Accountable

Charitable Aims

The Charitable Aims of The Shakespeare Globe Trust, as laid down in our founding instrument are as follows: ‘The Trust’s primary purpose is to promote, maintain, improve, and advance education, by encouraging and stimulating public appreciation and understanding of the dramatic art in all its forms, but principally in relation to the works of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The Trust fulfils this purpose through educational programmes, theatre performances, exhibitions and guided tours at the Globe Theatre.

Diversity & Inclusion, and Anti-Racism at Shakespeare’s Globe

Inclusion Statement

We’re committed to becoming an anti-racist organisation, which will not tolerate discrimination, bullying or prejudice. It’s important that each and every person who works at the Globe feels safe, valued, and respected. If we’re alerted to any offensive, threatening, or intimidating behaviour – by either a colleague, audience member, or collaborator – we’ll be quick and firm in addressing the issue.

The Globe is a place where everyone should feel they belong, a place where fairness and equity of opportunity exists; where creativity is encouraged, enterprise is supported, education is readily available, and all can achieve their most ambitious projects.