As part of the World Shakespeare Festival for the London 2012 Festival we are bringing together artists from all over the globe, to enjoy speaking these plays in their own language, in our Globe, within the architecture Shakespeare wrote for.

The artists will play the Globe way - telling stories through the word and the actor, complemented by costumes, music and dance - and will complete each play within two-and-a-quarter hours (we hope).

Many of the world’s greatest directors, over six hundred actors from all nations, and audiences from every corner of our polyglot community, will assemble to celebrate the stories, the characters and the relationships, which are etched into all of us.

Shakespeare is the language which brings us together better than any other, and which reminds of our almost infinite difference, and of our strange and humbling commonality. And above all there are the plays themselves, plays which have travelled far and wide, and which on their travels have midwifed new theatre cultures, spread light and laughter, and helped nations, new and old, to define themselves.

A Globe beside the Thames is where many of these plays began their extraordinary journey. Another Globe beside the Thames is delighted to be bringing these plays, dressed in the clothes of many peoples, back home …

Please come and join us!