In July 2006, the RSC opened the 1000 seat Courtyard Theatre. The new, temporary theatre, built adjoining The Other Place, allows for increased audience capacity in Stratford during the Festival of up to 2800 theatregoers a night. The Courtyard Theatre will continue as the Company’s main theatre when work starts in 2007 on the transformation of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

The thrust-stage Courtyard Theatre, a prototype auditorium for the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre, opened with Artistic Director Michael Boyd re-visiting the Henry VI trilogy – plays which won him an Olivier Award in 2001. The productions mark the start of a new history cycle encompassing Shakespeare’s entire chronicle of English history. Visiting companies in The Courtyard Theatre include Edward Hall’s Propeller all-male company with a residency which includes The Taming of the Shrew.

During October 2006, the Company created a new temporary 100-seat studio theatre inside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre auditorium. The new venue, created especially for one month of the Festival, hosted small-scale, multimedia and physical theatre companies. Visitors will include Filter, Forkbeard Fantasy and Yellow Earth in a co-production with Shanghai Arts.

As well as performing in RSC theatres, The Complete Works covers venues throughout the town. A new outdoor theatre, The Dell, hosted a fringe festival of work by amateur, school and student groups over the summer. Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried, provided the setting for a production of Henry VIII (from aandbc, directed by Greg Thompson), while The Shakespeare Centre hosts the homeless people’s theatre company Cardboard Citizens in their staging of Timon of Athens as a management-training course.