Guest Blogger: Geraldine Collinge
January 27, 2011
Adelaide Road – a street much like any other in London suburbs that hug the city centre. A look at its recent history reveals houses for sale, a thriving pub, stories of residents protesting at tower block construction, petty crime and a feisty resident blogger.
At one end of Adelaide Road the Royal Shakespeare Company is nearing the end of our season of an intense repertoire of eight Shakespeare plays over ten weeks at the Roundhouse while at the other, Hampstead Theatre specialises in new writing and will welcome the RSC in April with a programme of three new plays.
http://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/page/3031/Little+Eagles/231
What brings these two seasons together is literally the road but also the themes of exile, home and belonging that resonate through Shakespeare, much of the new work and our preoccupations today. The RSC itself has had a peripatetic relationship with London over the past nine years, a relationship that has often worked in our favour allowing us to play the West End with David Tennant and explore Wilton's Music Hall, for example, with Marina Carr's The Cordelia Dream. A new five year relationship with the Roundhouse gives stability and an opportunity to grow joint projects and activity, the burgeoning relationship with Hampstead Theatre is intriguing as Edward Hall's programme starts to take shape. But, our home is Stratford-upon-Avon, a small market town nestling in beautiful countryside whose official website plays lute music when you land on it. Shakespeareans, tourists and people who have nothing to do with Shakespeare or the theatre go about their business as in any other small town, just with additional Tudor trimmings and on the riverside sits a beautifully refurbished theatre of international standing.
How do we think of home when we move around so much and our friends and families are spread across the world? What importance will buildings play in our lives as we face global warming, the government's cuts take hold and the web knits us together in new and exciting ways?
I'm looking forward to exploring these tensions over the next twelve weeks or so with poet in residence Aoife Mannix, the residents of Adelaide Road and the participants in the project. We'll be sharing our explorations on line and I look forward to hearing what you think of them and seeing where the journey takes us.
Geraldine Collinge
Director of Events and Exhibitions RSC
by Geraldine Collinge
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