For 10 days in October, Shoreditch will come alive with the sound of poetry, plays and creativity. From Haggerston to Old Street, professionals, locals and businesses will come together to celebrate the connection between Britain’s favourite playwright and London’s most creative neighbourhood. Shakespeare in Shoreditch is a Festival spanning two years between Shakespeare’s 450th birthday and the 400 year anniversary of his death.
Apart from the names of the buildings on the Arden Estate, and Burbage Primary School, traces of Shakespeare’s Shoreditch are hard to find. Archaeologists from the Museum of London have identified foundations from both The Theatre and The Curtain but unlike StratforduponAvon and The Globe, Shakespeare’s life in Shoreditch is far from the public consciousness. We are launching a Festival which celebrates the universality of his plays and characters designed for a 21st century Shoreditch.
We have commissioned ten of the UK’s most exciting writers to radically reinterpret Shakespeare’s characters and ten of the London’s most exciting theatre companies to bring these stories to life. We have also challenged our writerinresidence Annie Jenkins to write 1000 plays over the course of the festival from a shed within our hub at the Rose Lipman Building which will also host playwriting courses from our writers and companies.
We have also programmed a number of satellite events including a game taking you across Shoreditch to discover the origin of Shakespeare’s stories, a date with the Witches’ from Macbeth at the British Museum and a salon with some of Britain’s foremost Shakespeare experts.
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