Also by Dominic Dromgoole
The Full Room
Will and Me
DOMINIC DROMGOOLE
Hamlet: Globe
to Globe
TAKING SHAKESPEARE TO EVERY
COUNTRY IN THE WORLD
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Dominic Dromgoole, 2017
Extract taken from Station Island © Estate of Seamus Heaney and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 692 9
eISBN 978 1 78211 691 2
Typeset in Bembo by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
For the family who went all the way round,
For the family who stayed at home,
And for Sasha, Siofra, Grainne and Cara
Keep at a tangent.
When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim
out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,
echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,
elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.
Seamus Heaney
Station Island
CONTENTS
3 Setting out Through the Baltics
4 Words and Walls in Mitteleuropa
13 Fighting for Eggshells and Revenge
17 Embattled Theatre Near the Great Rift Valley
List of Illustrations
Naeem and Tom facing off as Hamlet and Laertes in Odeon Amphitheatre, Amman, Jordan. © Sarah Lee
Amanda hides as Ophelia in a merry moment during the first ever performance of Hamlet in Myanmar. © David Hempenstall
Walking into the sandstorm that stopped our show in the Zaatari refugee camp, Jordan. © Sarah Lee
President Poroshenko and boxer Wladimir Klitschko looking a little nonplussed on the eve of the elections in Ukraine. © The British Council of Ukraine
Two hundred ambassadors at the UN and, for reasons we never fully ascertained, Kim Cattrall and Laurie Anderson. © Russ Roland
Rockstar screens in front of the Pacific in Antofagasta, Chile. © Magaly Visedo
Our host Jama addresses a press conference in Somaliland. © Dave McEvoy
Backstage with Phoebe and Keith in a Monsoon in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. © Piotr Zaporowski
A square of all ages in Prague. © Karishma Balani
A section of the four thousand who witnessed the show in Khartoum, Sudan. © British Council in Sudan
Corpses strewn across the stage in Estonia. © Siim Vahur
Beruce and Naeem do a fight call, the Red Sea rolling in the background. © Dave McEvoy
Happy holiday snap on the Copán Ruins of Honduras. © Malú Ansaldo
Publicity in Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Ivory Coast and Japan. © Malú Ansaldo, Beruce Khan
Amanda points to Norway in a Yemeni refugee camp. © Jess Watts
Saying goodbye to the Globe. © Sarah Lee
INTRODUCTION
WE PLANNED WITH GUSTO AT the Globe. Some believe that away days should be focused affairs in blank overlit rooms, with PowerPoint presentations, brows so furrowed as to be carved in stone, and bullet points ricocheting off the walls. Others prefer firing middle management through forests on zipwires, or forcing upper management to humiliate themselves on assault courses. At the Globe, we took a different approach – good eating and gargantuan drinking.
2012 had been something