London Evening Standard: One of London’s top theatres sent a rather confusing message to the world today as it appeared to push out its incumbent artistic director for being too forward-thinking.
Shakespeare’s Globe announced Emma Rice would leave them in April 2018 owning to sound rigs and lighting. Ms Rice, the first woman to hold the job, joined only in April of this year.
4 comments:
I’m not going to bash a theatre for wanting to remain a museum piece. It isn’t my taste, but if that is it’s founding mission, so be it. I can, however, fault a theatre for a lack of unity in its governance. It sounds to me like there is not only a power struggle between the board and artistic direction, but that there was, even before Ms. Rice was hired, a tension within the board regarding the Globe’s mission. How else can you explain such a sharp retraction of a heavily vetted, highly qualified, highly successful candidate? I agree with the author of the article that it’s hard to imagine the board was surprised by Ms. Rice’s approach and I don’t think any board member with theatre experience would expect a director to just jettison their creative identity. Sometimes seemingly illogical behavior is rooted in internal power struggles. I imagine there’s a faction in the board interested in innovation and ambition and a faction rooted in original intent and historical faithfulness.
It seems like the problems with Rice's departure from the Globe are far more complicated than I think a lot of people are giving credit to. The key line from this article that stood out to me was the idea that Rice having to leave was less related to installing modern sound and lighting gear and more related to the fact that the Board of Directors didn't feel like they could keep a strong enough hand in the activities of the theatre while Rice was in charge. While I respect the Board's desire to want to maintain the stature and significance of the globe in a way that didn't make the experience audience members had in theatre to be cheapened. While this wasn't explicitly said in the article, I would hope that their intentions were that positive. However, I would caution that this could become a very detrimental move in terms of how audience's will respond to having the first female artistic director of the globe pushed out of her position. I have a feeling that this story will continue to develop over the coming weeks.
I am a little surprised by how out of the blue this was. I want to know the real truth because we can read articles all day long but in the end we don’t know the truth until we actually talk to the people directed related to it. If it is true that they are kicking her out because she goes against the grain that they set and expect from the Globe then good for her. She needs to do what she feels is right and follow her heart. Yes things may be different and not look the same everyday for the rest of the Globes life but give it some fresh insight. Times are changing and with it theatre needs to change as well. You can’t expect for the same audience to come to every performance of Romeo and Juliet and be content with seeing it done the same way every time. I wonder if the board is full of old white men who don’t like change. However, I say all of that but in actuality there is probably more to this story than just what this article is saying.
I’m curious what people who agree with The Globe’s decision would say, because from every article I’ve read, it seems like The Globe’s decision to send Emma Rice away was a poor one. Especially given that The Globe should have known who they were hiring and what her plans were, and that she has been successful at working toward what she aimed to do.
This article also brings up a couple interesting situations I hadn’t considered. The first, what will Rice do with her remaining time at The Globe? It is an awkward situation to be in, not just because she can’t plan in the long term, but because she is working for a company that she knows doesn’t want her there. I would assume she will keep doing what she has been doing at The Globe so far, maybe more-so if she can, because at this point, what does she have to lose? The other situation this article addresses is that whoever is hired next will be being hired because they are less innovative than Rice, but my guess is whoever they hire next will be more of a traditionalist, and therefore won’t see the ways they are different than Rice as a bad thing.
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