The new short film about our plans for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
Narrated by Michael Wood, Broadcaster.
In voice-over accompanying time-lapse footage of construction at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST).
Michael Wood
Something extraordinary is happening at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Michael Boyd
RSC Artistic Director
It's nothing much short of a revolution. More and more, theatre is going to be a shared experience between audience and stage. This is the architectural embodiment of that.
Vikki Heywood
RSC Executive Director
It's an iconic site and we've got a duty and a responsibility to really be as inspirational as we can be. The thing that drives us is to create the best performance space for Shakespeare in the world.
Michael Wood
[Gesturing to the construction site behind him] This famous Royal Shakespeare Theatre was built in 1932. It was an innovation in its time but, of course, the world and time move on, and so does the theatre. In the 21st Century, actors, directors and audiences demand a more close and intense relationship between the spectators and the stage: more visceral, more psychological - and that's the thinking that lies behind the Royal Shakespeare Company's audacious plan to gut this entire great old building and create a complex which will be a destination in itself, in addition to being the very best place in the world to see the works of the world's greatest dramatist.
Michael Wood (in voice-over)
It's an enormous operation involving hundreds of people, from architects and theatre historians to structural engineers.
Andrew Wylie
Structural Engineer
A really important first step for all of us was really to understand the history of the site. There's been a theatre on the site for over 100 years. It's gone through a whole lifetime of use, alteration, change, but we had to understand all of that.
Rab Bennetts
Architect
It's more than just a building. We had to master-plan other buildings around the place: the workshops alongside it, the way to get to the other theatre along the street and so on, so it was absolutely not just about one auditorium at all.
Michael Wood
The new theatre will have welcoming public spaces, but the most daring feature will be a new landmark for Stratford.
Rab Bennetts
The theatre, once upon a time, had a tower - which was quite tall - before the 1926 fire, and of course it collapsed, and now if you arrive in Stratford you quite often get people asking where the theatre is, hence a landmark in the shape of a tower to pull it all together, which provides people with a point of orientation and a place where they can really see the lie of the land.
Michael Wood (in voice-over)
But at the heart of the whole project is still William Shakespeare.
Dame Judi Dench
RSC Honorary Associate Artist
Shakespeare is synonymous with Stratford, and it's a thrilling place to go. You know, it's a very magical place to go to, Stratford. That's where he was born and where he went to school. There is nothing quite like saying 'I've seen Shakespeare at Stratford.' The RSC is where I was first bewitched, I think, as an adult. Really bewitched.
Gregory Doran
RSC Chief Associate Director
The ghosts will remain in those walls. All the great performances that we all either witnessed in the audience - or some of us actually performed on those stages - will still be retained in the footprint of the new theatre. I think that's very important. Change is always frightening but I think it's always invigorating too. In some ways it's big changes and in some ways it's just developing on, organically, from what we've learnt and what we now want to embrace.
Peter Wilson
Project Director
The RSC is very keen on keeping its ghosts and keeping its history. It's really important not to over-do it, to get so enthusiastic about perfection that you take away the character of the old building. It was a building at the end of Art Deco and the beginning of Modernism. What we really hope for is that the new parts - the new roof and the tower - will add something that makes the original stronger, that gives it a new life as a new building with the best of the old and some new.
Michael Wood (in voice-over)
Throughout this great transformation, the RSC will carry on performing nearly every night in its temporary Courtyard Theatre and, as always, seeking new audiences.
[following a performance at The Courtyard Theatre]
Audience Member 1
I thought it was really good. I really liked the modern take on it.
Audience Member 2
Different. It was different than what we thought it was going to be.
[following at matinee performance at The Courtyard Theatre]
Interviewer
What did you think?
Audience Member 3
I thought it was excellent. The comedy at the end - with the wall - I just through that was great.
Interviewer
Had you seen live Shakespeare before?
Audience Member 4
No, it was the first time I'd seen it so I didn't know what to expect but I didn't think it would be that great... but it was. It was really good.
Interviewer
Will you go again?
Audience Member 4
Well, I'm coming tonight, so... [laughter]
Michael Wood (in voice-over)
And while the old auditorium is being torn down, the temporary Courtyard stage has become the testing ground for the new theatre.
Michael Boyd
The days of the hierarchical single controlled vision of the Director, within a picture frame, those days are numbered. They've been taken over by cinema, which excels at that.
Andy Hayles
Theatre Consultant
Of course, in the old RST building the furthest member of the audience was 27 metres away from the stage and, now, in this wonderful new thrust Royal Shakespeare Theatre, we've brought that figure right down to 15 metres, so nearly half as far away as they were. It's those wonderful lessons we've learnt from history, from the Elizabethan Playhouses, that you can just reach out and touch not only the people in the front of the Stalls but in the Circle and in the Gallery and, similarly, they can reach out and touch you and feel like they have that communication with each other across the room. Absolutely vital. Makes it very exciting.
Michael Wood (in voice-over)
The core idea of the new theatre is the thrust stage, projecting right out into the audience.
[On stage in the empty Courtyard Theatre]
Chuk Iwuji
Actor
It's the difference between sitting back and watching something and being plopped right into the middle of something. For instance, you think of Henry V. It's a very different thing, Henry being able to go to this person [he walks to the side of the stage to address the front row of seats]
Actor playing Henry V reads lines from Henry V Act III
Once more unto the breach, dear friends...
Chuk Iwuji
[picks up the Henry V lines from the actor, delivering them right at the edge of the stage to the front row]
Once more, or close the wall up with our English dead... They're right here [gesturing to the front row of seats]. Who's not going to get excited by that?
Actor playing Henry V
In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility
Chuk Iwuji
You feel that you haven't just told them, you've asked them to experience it.
Michael Wood
So, you're much more aware of individual people in the audience.
Chuk Iwuji
You have to be. So, suddenly the audience members aren't just sitting like this [looks ahead], watching that [motions in front of his face]. They're doing this and doing that [looks up and around in the space above him], and so they are part of the whole world. It is a lot more intimate; it is a lot more demanding. There's fewer places to hide - for us and the audience.
Michael Boyd
This [The Courtyard Theatre] is a democratic space where nobody feels they're being tucked at the back somewhere because there isn't a back. That's what theatre has to offer: this quintessentially collaborative art form.
Vikki Heywood
There are nearly 700 people who work for the RSC.
Michael Wood (in voice-over)
And as an Ensemble, the RSC depends on many creative people.
RSC Costume Department staff member
[Giving a tour around the Costume Department] These are the tights from A Midsummer Night's Dream
Elaine Moore
Head of Hats and Jewellery
[Motioning towards a wig] This is from the Wig Department.
Vikki Heywood
We make all our own props, our sets, our costumes. We have Milliners, we have Wig Makers, we have Armourers - and they're all going to benefit as well from this. We will, in the end, have basically rebuilt every part of the Company.
Michael Boyd
You've got a real chance of building a contingent, optimistic community with the Royal Shakespeare Company - and it will be in a building that's opening itself out to the rest of Stratford, whose front door faces Stratford for the first time ever.
Michael Wood (in voice-over)
The plan for the transformation of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre isn't just about the theatre itself.
Michael Wood
Looking from the riverside you can see that the building has been stripped back to the original 1930s brick facade, which has also revealed a spacious terrace running alongside the theatre, and the Architect's plan is to incorporate that terrace into a riverside walk extending from the old Clopton Bridge on the London Road up to Shakespeare's church. For the first time, not only theatregoers but all visitors to Stratford will be able to enjoy this special vista of one of Britain's - and the world's - favourite historic towns.
Patrick Stewart
RSC Honorary Associate Artist
Even if people don't make it into the main house, coming to Stratford and being exposed to some kind of performance, to Shakespeare, is going to be very attractive. Growth, development, renewal: it's critical to any art. You cannot stand still, you stagnate if you do.
Courtyard Theatre Announcement
[Over footage of The Courtyard Theatre before a performance] Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your seats. The performance is about to begin.
Dame Judi Dench
If you love Shakespeare you want to promote that passion for it and you want to also, hopefully, pass it to somebody else. You want to just pass it on, that somebody else should have the joy that you've had.
Actor playing King Henry V
[On stage in The Courtyard Theatre, beginning a performance of Henry V] Oh, for a muse of fire...
Patrick Stewart
RSC Honorary Associate Artist
There is no other writer who has the worldwide, international exposure that Shakespeare has...
Actor in Henry V
...Princes to act, and Monarchs to behold the swelling...
Patrick Stewart
Shakespeare is important to the cultural life of the entire planet. This project could not be going ahead without individuals or communities paying for the work itself: making a contribution not just to one theatre organisation in the United Kingdom but to the appreciation of what the RSC does worldwide.
[Following a performance at The Courtyard Theatre]
Audience member 5
Loved it.
Audience member 6
Loved it.
Audience member 5
Really loved it.
Audience member 6
Brilliant. Loved the costumes. Set - amazing.
Audience member 5
The RSC do it like nobody else. They get it.
Audience member 7
That was amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Audience member 8
It doesn't get better than this.
Audience member 9
Really, really good. It was really amazing.
Audience member 10
It's the whole aura of Shakespeare.
Audience member 11
This company, they're just... they're all fantastic. They do a really terrific job, not only getting in touch with the text but with the audience as well.
Audience member 12
The atmosphere...
Audience member 13
It was just... it was breathtaking
Interviewer
So you've come especially from America to see this?
Audience member 14
Just for this.
Interviewer
Fantastic.
Audience member 14
And we'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Interviewer
Really?
Audience member 14
Oh, absolutely.
Audience member 13
Absolutely.
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre is due for completion in 2010.
Over 600 people are involved in the design and construction of the new theatre.
Throughout, the RSC will continue to perform in Stratford-upon-Avon at the Courtyard Theatre.