ISSUE 40: April 2019 Volunteer Steward MUCHABOUT STEWARDING ADO Newsletter SPRINGTIME, SHAKESPEARE WALKS AND SUMMER SEASON! HELLO ALL AND WELCOME TO YOUR APRIL In our other iconic event, Shakespeare within the Abbey, visitors are encouraged EDITION OF MUCH ADO ABOUT STEWARDING! to roam around the site experiencing The end of March saw us say goodbye in many ways including a surprise flash fleeting, contemplative and intimate Playing the company of this year’s mob in the foyer performed by Fourth encounters with Shakespeare’s drama, Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank Choir. Audiences seemed to enjoy the poetry, dance and song beneath the soaring Romeo and Juliet production of . Across performance as much as we did with ribs of the magnificent Westminster the 32 performances we welcomed over feedback including ‘#AfterEdward is such Abbey. These events would not be able 41,000 visitors into our ‘wooden ‘O’’ a cathartic, thought-provoking piece. A to take place without the support of to experience the explosive entrance beautiful sublimation of influences into stewards. Do let us know if you would like through the trap at the start of the compelling moving art.’ to be involved as we would love to have performance, Prince Escalus’s entrance your help! Last year Alison Yates said that through heaven on a helicopter and Ahead of the official start of the Summer she loved the walk and found it beautiful final moments of the jig complete with Season we are excited to be hosting and stimulating as well as wonderfully confetti cannons. An amazing 27,500 of our annual events to commemorate entertaining from the Sonneteers. Shakespeare’s birthday. Formerly known our visitors enjoyed performances for We can’t quite believe a whole year has as the Sonnet Walks, Shakespeare Walks free as part of our subsidised schools passed since the start of Michelle Terry’s are a unique event which have taken performances. Thank you to all of you inaugural season at the Globe and are place annually over the past 25 years. who braved the winter weather and rallied excited to be embarking on a year of Visitors are handed a rose at the start of together to keep our liveliest audience of history plays. To celebrate the start of the a two-hour walk through Shakespeare’s the year safe and happy. season we will be inviting you to attend London, brought alive by 22 actors. Walks our Welcome to the Season Party on the As April begins we are turning our start at either Westminster Abbey or Saturday 4 May. We hope that you will be attention towards the final moments of from the parish of Shoreditch where able to come together and meet some the Winter Season in which productions the original Theatre was built in 1576, of our new stewards, have fun and help of Richard II and Edward II have examined and walks finish at Shakespeare’s Globe. us usher in the new season. We will be ancestral relationships and notions Along the way visitors will stop off at sending an invite out with further details of identity, sexuality and desire along places in London that Shakespeare knew, After Edward shortly. We are looking forward to welcoming with , a daring new play. and encounter scenes, speeches and After Edward you back into the Globe very soon! was written in response to sonnets enacted in the streets, parks and Edward II and has delighted audiences squares of modern London. Best Wishes, Kate, Rosie, Jenny, Tasha, Carly, Natasha, Sandra and the Duty Managers 1 Team of the Month ACCESS Previous Front of House Duty Manager always bumping into stewards Opi tells us about his new role as Access who had come to see shows. Assistant here at the Globe! In January 2014, the Playhouse Ten years ago, I used to work at the opened and I became a full time Duty Teatro Circo Price in Madrid. I first Manager here at the Globe. We quickly started working as a Production learnt that fainters were as common Assistant before taking on a new role in the Playhouse as the Globe! My as a Duty Manager. It was a small team passion for the Globe continued to of three and I am still in touch with the grow further as I became a Tour Guide. two colleagues that I worked with in performances being midnight I have now taken on a new role in the my time here. Sometimes I am lucky matinees! That year the season was Communications department, as the even to be invited to see a show and extended for another week, so after the Access Assistant working with David have some complementary popcorn End of Season Party I decided to stay Bellwood the Access Manager. We are in and beer! We used to host a variety of a bit longer and continue making the charge of making the Globe accessible events including concerts, conferences, most of an amazing experience. to all patrons and staff. Throughout my corporate events, dance, and of course, The following year, Celia offered me a time at the Globe I have experienced circus productions. The shape of the contract as a Duty Manager, so I came Dominic’s, Emma’s and now Michelle’s building is very similar to the Globe back again for the summer. After being eras, and other major changes. Whilst with the addition of a roof! welcomed by stewards and colleagues I miss my DM colleagues, Celia and I came to Shakespeare’s Globe in the alike I decided to permanently move Carly, the Volunteer Management Team summer of 2010 for a couple of months to London! This was the year of the and of course the Volunteer Stewards as an intern. I chose to volunteer as Olympics and at the Globe I worked as and I am delighted to still be around for an intern because I wanted to learn Duty Manager on the Globe to Globe accessible performances. Look out for more about how theatres operated Festival. This was before the Playhouse me in your briefings! I can use my BSL in England. As a volunteer I did lots opened so during the winter I spent and my counselling skills in my new role, of stewarding with my favourite my time working at West End venues new times for the old Globe… in London than the Globe on a 8 Tell us a funny story from your time sparkling summer evening, or the at the Globe: Titus with... cozy candlelight of the Playhouse During a production of 2014’s on a winter’s day. Andronicus, I was on Door 3, and a 4 Favourite Steward’s room biscuits? patron commented that he could tell QUESTIONS Shortbread! when the bloody parts were coming 5 Favourite duty? up, as all the stewards “stood up like 10Mieke meerkats” to watch for fainters. Doors 2 or 3, you’re always busy and That mental image pops into my have wonderful opportunities to mind every time I’m in the Yard. chat with patrons. 9 What’s your life mantra? 6 What has been your favourite production? ‘I may not have gone where I intended As You Like It to go, but I think I have ended up 2009’s with Naomi where I needed to be.’ Frederick and Jack Laskey – that was Douglas Adams my first season, and it was amazing 10 If you could pass on one stewarding tip to to watch audience after audience other stewards, what would it be? respond to the jokes, whisper along Embrace it: the wind, the 1 Name with the well-known speeches, and cheer for love, even in the pouring rain, the sunshine, the Mieke Berg rain (I did a lot of Yard Steps shifts blanket folding, the coffee spilled from 2 Tea or coffee? that year ....). the Upper Gallery, Tea, taken ‘two and moo’ 7 If you could be any Shakespeare the laughs, the grumbles, What drew you into volunteering character who would you be 3 the tumbling cushion at the Globe? and why? towers, the song and As a London transplant, I was Mistress Page – she’s witty, dance – the Globe is looking at ways to meet new people has no time for nonsense, alive, and we are a but also contribute to the city I and has some fabulous moving part of it had chosen as my home. I don’t adventures with a great best – how lucky are we? think there’s a more magical place friend – what’s not to love? 2 MOORE, McCARTHYISM AND MYTH-BUSTING: SAM WANAMAKER’S TAPES Since the start of February, I have had the privilege of cataloguing audio material newly digitised through the generosity of The Pilgrim Trust, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the family of Belinda Morse. The original reel-to-reel tapes were variously commissioned, ordered, made and owned by Sam Wanamaker. From the inaugural events of the Globe Playhouse Trust onwards, it was quite clear that Sam’s vision for the library aspect of his project included an audio archive of lectures and events, as well as performances, and it is gratifying to feel that the recent digitisation makes who was subject to surveillance. Another was a recording of a pair this material accessible just as he had intended. of radio broadcasts of Laura Riding’s ‘Four Unposted Letters to Catherine’, read by his wife, Charlotte Holland. After one of the first Globe Playhouse Trust lectures, Sam discusses a recent visit to the site by the sculptor Two tapes derived from a recorded interview with Michael Henry Moore, who had agreed to donate a sculpture.