Actress with no directing experience is picked to lead Globe
Michelle Terry lands coveted role as London theatre’s artistic director
AN ACTRESS with no directing experience has been appointed as artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, one of the most coveted jobs in British theatre.
Michelle Terry will replace Emma Rice, who is leaving after clashes with the board over her experimental style.
Rather than play it safe and hire an established artistic director, the Globe has chosen an actress with many Shakespearean performances to her name but no stage directing jobs on her CV. Terry cut her teeth at the Royal Shakespeare Company and has appeared at the Globe several times: playing Rosalind in a 2015 production of As You Like It, Titania and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2013), and the Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost (2007).
Last summer she played the title role in Henry V at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, a casting decision that The Daily Telegraph’s theatre critic described as “the biggest cross-gender shock to the Shakespearean system this year”.
While Terry is known for risk-taking performances, it is understood that in one area at least she will take a traditional approach.
Sources said she would abandon the use of microphones to amplify the actors’ voices, one of the innovations brought in by Rice and loathed by the board.
Neil Constable, chief executive of the Globe, said he was “delighted” to announce Terry’s appointment.
“Audiences have loved her sparkling and intelligent performances on our stage over the years,” he said. “Now they will have the opportunity to see her fresh artistic vision come to life as she moves into a new phase of her impressive career.”
Constable had already stated that directing experience was not a prerequisite for the job. “It’s not a director-led space,” he said when the application process opened. “It’s why the Globe is one of the few leading national organisations that could be led by an actor.”
Terry has spoken often of her passion for the Bard, saying in one interview: “I could do Shakespeare forever. I love him.”
She told The Stage that working at the Globe “taught me more about performing Shakespeare than anything else. The audience are standing in the sun for three hours and they’re so hungry. The dynamic between you and them is so alive. They might be moving around or distracted by pigeons or planes.”
Reacting to her appointment, she said: “The work of Shakespeare is for me timeless, mythic, mysterious, vital, profoundly human and unapologetically theatrical.
“There are no other theatres more perfectly suited to house these plays than the pure and uniquely democratic spaces of The Globe.”
Terry is the fourth artistic director at the Globe, following Sir Mark Rylance, Dominic Dromgoole and Rice.
Born in Nuneaton, she studied at Rada and made her professional debut in a West End production of Blithe Spirit.