The artistic director looks back at a year of crisis for the arts and ahead to a celebratory, livestreamed summer season
When Shakespeare’s Globe announced its reopening plans for spring, the headline news was that it had killed off the interval. Shows in its new season will run without a break as part of Covid safety protocols that include, for the first time, seats spread out in the theatre’s yard where groundlings have traditionally jostled shoulder to shoulder.
The Globe’s artistic director, Michelle Terry, pointed out that the plays were not written with intervals in the first place. When we catch up for a chat a week or so before the theatre reopens, she adds that audiences will be given a “beautiful autonomy”, liberated from the strictures “must sit in seat, must face forward, lights must go down”. To pee or not to pee is a question no longer reserved for the halfway point. “You can come in and out, that’s your right,” she says. “Go to the loo, go to the gift shop, go to the bar which will stay open.” It’s about trusting Shakespeare as a writer, rather than worrying about what you may miss. “If it’s really that important, he’ll probably repeat it at least five times,” she says with a laugh.
