The Real Shakespeare Company

A repertory company dedicated to the performing Shakespeare’s plays in a straightforward, no gimmicks, non conceptualised manner.

William Shakespeare wrote plays under specific conditions, for specific actors and – above all – for a specific audience. Current academic research into who this audience contained, is copious. There is a general agreement that the audiences were diverse, from apprentices to royalty. They all enjoyed the plays in their different ways.

How have audiences changed between then and now? Humanity remains the same. What moved and excited people in 1601 will move and excite people in 2010. The passions, emotions, excitement that are contained in these plays are essentially human and essentially timeless, as Ben Jonson so brilliantly observed. The “generation gap” explored in Romeo and Juliet for example is as relevant today as it was then. Our intention, in staging these plays in their original format, is to underline the timelessness of the themes.

The Real Shakespeare Company intends to mount these plays as they were conceived and intended by the genius who wrote them. A parallel may be a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony by a modern major symphony orchestra. The conductor’s intention is to perform the music in a way that he believes is the closest possible to what Beethoven heard in his head. A major symphony orchestra will neither introduce electric guitars and synthesizers to “modernise” the music, nor create a museum piece by playing on original instruments. Both are justifiable artistic endeavours, but their equivalent will not be part of our brief.

In Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, the building itself provided the “set” and the actors were forced to use the physical aspects of the building as it stood. A sense of spectacle was created by the flamboyance of the costumes. We will design a standing set containing the physical features necessary (the use of 2 levels in particular) which will be able to function in any theatrical environment and very high emphasis will be placed on costuming.

The actors will be recruited for their capacity to speak Shakespearean verse, with special attention given to their ability to adapt to different circumstances and play multiple roles.

Our aspiration – as was the aim of Chamberlain’s Men – is simply to please the audience. Giving access to these works in the most direct manner possible, avoiding intellectual interpretation and thus releasing the full power and exhilaration of the most enthralling works ever created for the stage.


Acting policy.

The actors will study their roles from cue scripts, in isolation from the overall view of the play itself, as the players for whom these roles were created were obliged to do. This is principally to maintain the diversity of vision that is central to Shakespeare’s creations. The actors will be honour bound not to refer to the play in either written or recorded form, developing their interpretation uniquely from the words spoken by their character. A large part of Shakespeare’s theatrical effectiveness is the collision of styles and intentions as the characters interact on stage. This procedure will preserve that and ensure that each actor creates a character that is unique to their individual talent and personality.

Directing policy.

The director will guide the actors as they create their characters from studying and analysing the text. There will be no imposition on the part of the director concerning the interpretation of a character – any interpretation will be initiated by the actors themselves. Having spent a certain time working individually and learning their roles, the actors will meet for a first “run through”. A plot sheet will guide them through the entrances and exits and basic action – again in the same way as the players of the time. This will inevitably be chaotic, as modern actors are not used to working under these conditions.

However, this chaos will be artistically profitable, as the actors will be forced to react to the words and actions of their colleagues in a way that will be utterly spontaneous and therefore truthful to the intentions of the author. Whilst it will be impossible to maintain all the elements of surprise experienced in the first “run through”, the subsequent rehearsals will build on them to maintain that freshness which is so necessary to make theatre alive.

At no point in the rehearsal process will the director impose an overall style or intellectual viewpoint on the production. All interpretation choices will come from the actors – they will have a total “creative permission”. The main reason for this is that the plays are built outwards from the characters. Any attempt to impose a style is, of necessity, going to subordinate the characters to the vision, rather than the characters determining the direction of the play.

The director will only intervene if there is a real incompatibility and at that point the actors will have to accept a compromise arbitrated by the director.
Given the genius of Shakespeare, it is likely that this will never occur.