Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre has opened, bring four new plays to the pop-up theatre in the shadow of Clifford’s Tower.
Running from Tuesday 25 June – Sunday 1 September 2019, the programme features Hamlet, Henry V, The Tempest and Twelfth Night.
It was opened by the York Town Crier Ben Fry and Linda Fenwick, High Sheriff of North Yorkshire, along with theatre creator James Cundall and the cast of Hamlet, who went on to perform the first show of the season that evening.
The pop-up Shakespearean theatre is constructed using state-of-the-art scaffolding technology, corrugated iron and timber.
Inspired by the Rose Theatre of 1587 in London’s Bankside, which was built fromtimber, with a lath and plaster exterior and thatch roof, Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre houses an audience of 900, with 560 seated in three covered tiers around an open-roofed courtyard with standing room for 340 ‘groundlings’.
As before, the theatre is located within a Shakespearean village, bringing an authentic Elizabethan ambience and theatricality to the event, and features:
- ‘wagon’ performances of Elizabethan-style entertainment, including comic mini-plays and speeches
- food and drink in the oak-framed and reed-thatched Bear Arms pub
- an Elizabethan garden created by Yorkshire garden designer Sally Tierney.
