Dromgoole Stays on at Bankside Globe Until 2011

Dominic Dromgoole (pictured) has signed a new three-year contract with Shakespeare’s Globe, which will see him staying on until the end of 2011. However, the Bankside landmark may be recruiting for Dromgoole’s successor soon after.

In an interview with Whatsonstage.com this week (See Today’s Features), Dromgoole confirms his new contract and that, while he may agree to an extension so that he can oversee Olympic festivities in 2012, he’s unlikely to stick around much longer than that.

“I’m currently on my first three-year contract and I’ve been offered another three-year contract which I have accepted with joy,” Dromgoole told Whatsonstage.com. “I don’t tend to stay too long at a place, though. I stayed at the Bush for six years and at Oxford Stage Company for seven years. If they don’t sack me, I’d like to stay at the Globe a little longer than that. I’d like to be here for the Olympics.”

Before he goes, Dromgoole aims to complete the Bard’s canon – to date, the two Henry VI’s, the Henry VI trilogy and All’s Well That Ends Well have not been performed at the new Globe, which opened in 1997 under founding artistic director and Dromgoole’s predecessor Mark Rylance.

The theatre has also so far raised £6 million of a targeted £20 million for three more projects: a new education centre, a wing for a new library and retail department and the completion of an indoor theatre, which would allow to present a year-round performance schedule. “If everything went wonderfully, we’d be able to get the (indoor theatre) opened by about 2012, but with the contracting economy, fundraising is more difficult than it has been in the past,” Dromgoole explained.

During the interview, Dromgoole also discusses differences between his and Rylance’s reigns, the genius of the Globe’s architecture, relationships with audiences versus the theatre industry, box office success, Shakespeare as a life influence and his own reputation as an outspoken “maverick”.

The Globe’s 2008 season, under the title “Totus Mondus”, launches this Wednesday – 23 April, Shakespeare’s birthday – with the first performance of Dromgoole’s own new production of King Lear, in which David Calder takes the title role (See News, 6 Feb 2008).

– by Terri Paddock