RSC to broadcast productions live, including Tennant’s Richard II

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is collaborating with Picturehouse Entertainment on ‘Live from Stratford-Upon-Avon’, a new programme to screen its productions live across the country.

The first live broadcast will be the RSC’s upcoming production of Richard II starring David Tennant, which will be filmed on 13 November 2013.

The production, which also features in the cast Nigel Lindsay, Michael Pennington and Oliver Ford Davies, will be screened into over 100 cinemas around the country, and will also be available in North America, Australia, Japan and Northern Europe.

The Company will also work with Ravensbourne College to stream the production into up to 1,000 UK schools, reaching an estimated 60,000 students, on 15 November 2013.

It will be accompanied by a live studio link-up hosted by Konnie Huq, and members of the creative team including director Gregory Doran and Tennant will take part in a live online Q&A with students.

The RSC is also opening up its work behind the scenes, through a series of short films available online during the run-up to the screening and live footage on the night, before the show and during the interval.

The start of an on-going programme to make the Company’s work more available to a nationwide and global audience, ‘Live from Stratford-Upon-Avon’ will see two other RSC Shakespeare plays filmed live during the next year, to be announced in September 2013.

RSC artistic director Gregory Doran said today: “I’m looking forward to these new broadcasts, which are part of our commitment to celebrate our ‘one-room spaces’ in Stratford and capture the thrill of sitting in the audience and experiencing theatre live.”