Week by week
Week 1
Welcome to Week 1 of Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank.
Rehearsals have now begun for this year's Playing Shakespeare with Deustche Bank production of Twelfth Night. Join us on our Week by Week journey as we follow the cast and the creatives through rehearsal and into performance.
This week we spoke to Simon Kenny (Designer) about the theme this year's production is taking, and how he and Bill Buckhurst (Director) came up with their ideas.
Introduce yourself to the cast on the characters' profile pages, and don't forget to listen to interviews with Dickon Tyrell (Sir Toby) and Peter Bray (Antonio) about what happened on the first day of rehearsals.
The full cast and production staff meet with Director Bill Buckhurst on day one of rehearsals.
Director Bill Buckhurst talks about his ideas for this production of Twelfth Night.
Behind the scenes for the poster photoshoot, with Molly Logan [Viola]
Behind the scenes for the poster photoshoot, with Molly Logan [Viola]
Behind the scenes for the poster photoshoot, with Molly Logan [Viola]
Behind the scenes for the poster photoshoot, with Molly Logan [Viola]
The photo of Molly Logan [Viola] used throughout the posters and brochure.
The final poster design used to advertise Twelfth Night.
Week 1 BLOG
Day One
Hello everybody! My name is Tom Davey and this is my first blog post! I am planning on giving you regular updates throughout the rehearsals and our run at The Globe.
This week we started rehearsals for Twelfth Night and I am VERY excited. I have been in another production of the play before, at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2007, playing Officer Number 2. I was only a few years out of drama school and extremely nervous. I didn’t have too much to do so got to watch and learn, particularly from John Lithgow, the wonderful American actor playing Malvolio. This time, I am playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek , a part I have always wanted to play, and to play him at the Globe Theatre is something of a dream come true. I am looking forward to getting to know the rest of the cast and hearing from our director, Bill Buckhurst, about how he sees it all. I am a self-employed actor which means I am used to working with lots of different directors and groups of actors. Directors can have very different approaches- some like to get you on your feet straight away while others spend weeks doing nothing but text work around a table. It’s important to go with the flow and trust the process you’re going through. Each job is a brand new adventure. Before this I have finished another acting job, Vanity Fair at Middle Temple Hall (a very old building where Twelfth Night was first performed in 1602), so I spent the weekend catching up on sleep before this adventure began!
I was lucky enough to be involved in Playing Shakespeare 2008, playing Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing. A Playing Shakespeare audience is unlike any other I have experienced as an actor: over 1500 young people assembled in the shared light of the Globe Theatre. Reactions to the play will be fresh and unpredictable. For many of you coming to see Twelfth Night, this will be the first Shakespeare play you’ve seen so we have to be especially mindful of our responsibilities as actors: to tell this story in as clear and entertaining a way as possible.
More from me next week now rehearsals are underway!
By Tom Davey [Sir Andrew Aguecheek]
NEW BRIEF AVAILABLE – Design a Poster
A creative brief is given to each member of the creative team working on the Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank project. The brief is intended to help them structure their ideas and keep a focus on the director's intended vision for the production. Why not be creative yourself by designing your own poster for the production using our creative brief.
When a play is planned by a theatre like Shakespeare’s Globe, an important task is to prepare an eye-catching poster to advertise the production and also to form the cover for the programme. Download the unused and finished posters on the right to look at how the design changed. You will notice that one of the posters has been annotated to show the links between the design and the themes of the play.
Here are our top tips to think about when designing a poster:
1. You need to make it stand out so that it immediately grabs the attention of the viewer.
2. You need to be as bold and creative as possible so that it is unique from any competition.
3. You need to make sure that all the information can be read clearly and that no important details about dates or times are lost.
4. You need to think about who the poster is aimed for and therefore target it for that particular audience.
5. You need to consider the subject matter for your poster. So you need to research the topic and understand it before you begin designing.
You can download the poster brief, these tips and inspiration and unused ideas from our designers on the right. Once you are done, email your creations to us at youngcreatives@shakespearesglobe.com and we may select it to feature on the site.