Theatre News

Globe Links with ROH for Big Screen Broadcasts

| London | London's West End |

23 September 2009

Following hot on the heels of the NT Live scheme, which launched back in June (See News, 14 Jan 2009), Shakespeare’s Globe has announced that it too will screen productions to a global cinema audience as part of a new partnership with the Royal Opera House-owned production company Opus Arte.

The Globe’s 2009 season productions of Romeo And Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost and As You Like It will all be recorded and shown in around 80 cinema screens nationally and over 500 worldwide, though the performances will not be broadcast live, as with the National Theatre scheme. Following the screenings, each production will be available on DVD.

Other venues that will have work distributed to cinemas by Opus Arte are the Royal Opera House, Royal Ballet, Teatro Real Madrid, Glyndebourne, Gran Teatre Del Liceu and King’s College, Cambridge.

Tony Hall, chairman of Opus Arte and chief executive of the Royal Opera House, said: “Bringing Shakespeare’s Globe really excites me in that we truly have a very diverse range of art forms. The Globe is a genuinely unique organisation, internationally recognised for bringing Shakespeare’s work alive in the venue for which it was written.”

Dominic Dromgoole, the Globe’s artistic director, added: “The relationship between live performance, new recording technology and new modes of distribution is going to be the big story for theatre, dance and opera over the next few years. We are delighted to be in partnership with the good people of Opus Arte and in the vanguard of that new movement.”

Dates and venues are still to be confirmed for the Globe screenings are still to be confirmed. For further information, and a full schedule of other forthcoming Opus Arte screenings, see www.roh.org.uk.