Shakespeare at Wal-Mart? (A new Globe Theatre for the 21st Century)

[Dover]

Recasting Shakespeare's Stage
Designing a Globe Theatre for the 21st century

By Eric Jaffe


The tractor-trailer planted firmly in the Wal-Mart parking lot did not seem out of place, but the actors who performed Merchant of Venice right beside it sure did. When the vehicle arrived it deployed into a full-size stage. Behind the set, pneumatic pods inflated to become ticket-windows and dressing rooms. Sunlight powered the spotlights and speakers. And when the playhouse folded up and drove off, a screen mounted on the side of the trailer replayed the show for all to see.

This is the Globe Theatre—not the one that housed Shakespeare's best dramas, but one conceived by Jennifer Siegal for a modern audience. Siegal's Globe is part homage to the Elizabethan era's itinerant theatre troupe, part shout-out to today's compact, on-the-go gizmos. The Los Angeles-based architect was one of five designers asked to create a 21st-century Shakespearean theatre for "Reinventing the Globe," a new exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., that opens January 13 and runs through August 2007.

Given only brief guidance and a few months to finish, these architects created modern Globes that challenge conventional thoughts about dramatic performances and the spaces that accommodate them, says Martin Moeller, the exhibition's curator. "When the words stay the same but all else changes, you realize how much power the words have," he says....cont'd

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2007/january/globe.php

[salvorhardin]

1. I really like this idea but...

I have a quibble with the writing. Can you give a shout-out to gizmos? I'm not opposed to the use of urban slang in writing but gizmos are inanimate objects. The usage just seems wrong here.