16. Michelle Terry on Shakespeare's Globe

Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe, Michelle Terry, shares her journeys and wisdom with Paul. 

Transcript

Paul Edmondson:            
 Hello everybody, and welcome to Shakespeare Alive, a podcast of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. My name is Paul Edmondson. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the award-winning Michelle Terry, the Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe since 2018. Michelle read English at Cardiff University and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And it's been my delight to see her in several Shakespearian roles. The Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. I saw her play Henry V for the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, and she was one of the best Rosalinds I've ever seen in As You Like It at the Globe in 2015. And, my goodness, she played in 2018 Hamlet at the Globe in a gender-fluid production. Other Shakespearian roles include Helen in All's Well That Ends Well for the National Theatre, Perdita in The Winter's Tale for the RSC, Lady Macbeth and Hotspur for the Globe Theatre and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Michelle: welcome.

Michelle Terry:                  
Oh, thanks. Thanks for having me.

Paul Edmondson:            
 Thank you for taking part in Shakespeare Alive. I wonder when you first became interested in Shakespeare, and why?

Michelle Terry:                
 Yeah, he's kind of been with me my whole life, really. I was born in Nuneaton, so didn't grow up ... I was born not too far Warwickshire, and then moved to Weston-Super-Mare when I was about five. I've got a four-year-old at the moment. You suddenly realize how formative those years are. And it was quite a seismic shift to leave school and go and find somewhere else. And mum and dad just found this local theater club for me to join. And I just remember at like six or seven reading the Puck, the Epilogue to Midsummer Night's Dream, and then starting to do these exams. And just, dad had always had these secondhand complete works in the living room on the bookshelf. And I think maybe because I met Shakespeare at such a young age, I was never told that this was something that I shouldn't understand or that was difficult or that it wasn't for me, or that I didn't have a place in it.

 It was just presented to me like, "Here's another poet that you can sort of engage with." And I obviously I didn't understand everything, I still don't understand everything. That's the joy of him, we'll never understand him, because it's a journey of the discovery of the self, isn't it? But I can remember really clearly sitting on our stairs having to read Richard III, I think I was doing the Lady Anne in Richard III scene, and I could only have been about 12 or 13, but it was like for an exam. And I just remember feeling so angry. And there was just something about how he writes as much as what he writes that, the way that he writes that is so visceral. I felt the feelings because of the sounds of the words, not necessarily understanding the meaning of the words themselves.

  And again, that was pre- having to sit them for an exam and having to study the plays for GCSE or anything like that. And only at GCSE did you start to go, "Oh. Oh, they're really hard. They're really difficult. And there's a right answer." And I remember going, "No, no, that's not my understanding of Shakespeare. My understanding of Shakespeare is the answer is however I meet him today, and tomorrow the answer will change." So I sort of, yeah, I feel very lucky that I met him and I met the plays way before someone told me that I shouldn't.

Paul Edmondson:         
 I'm excited you met the poetry as well as the action, it sounds like at the same time, really.

Michelle Terry:                
 Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Edmondson:             
Which is really important before you sort of start analyzing it. It was there within you, the musicality, the power of those words had already achieved a significant effect, hadn't they, on you?

Michelle Terry:                
Exactly. That transcend narrative. The sound of the word transcends narrative. It wasn't necessarily understanding the story, it was just understanding each moment, which - that's the job of the poet, isn't it? Yeah. [crosstalk 00:04:03].

Paul Edmondson:       
 Did you do lots of Shakespeare in Cardiff as well as at RADA?

Michelle Terry:                
 Yes. So I studied English, so I did a Shakespeare and Women module. Catherine Belsey was there at the time. So yeah, a lot of Shakespeare, studying Shakespeare. I think then we did, with the theater company, we did Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night. Hamlet we did in Castell Coch, just outside Cardiff. So yeah, just constantly performing. And actually at RADA, we didn't do that much. You do the sort of Shakespeare project at the end of your ... or I don't know what it's like now, but certainly I did the Shakespeare project at the end of the second year when I played Touchstone. And then none in my final year. So yeah, actually oddly at a drama school, not so much. More at university and then in life beyond. Yeah.

Paul Edmondson:             
Not long after RADA you landed the role of Perdita in Dominic Cooke's Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Winter's Tale. Wonderful season that, with Pericles. And the Swan, the Swan Theatre as we'd never seen it before with the seats removed on the ground level. And we were ground ... well, I was a groundling on several occasions watching those productions. That began an association, it's a very significant association, with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I wonder what you learned about Shakespeare from your performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company during your time in Stratford.

Michelle Terry:               
 I feel so lucky that my relationship with Shakespeare, because the first ever professional one I did was As You Like It at Newcastle-under-Lyme. So again, this theatre in the round where the audience are very present, very participatory. And then my next experience was to do that season with The Winter's Tale, and where the audience are not passive observers, or witnesses, they really are participating in the plays. And I remember one of the most profound things about that experience was we were rehearsing Winter's Tale, and it's the most exquisite play, and then you get to the reveal of the statue. And sort of grappling with how do you do it, what should we do, the tricks? The duh-duh-duh…. And then I remember Dominic one day just saying, "Look, we're just going to have to play the truth of it. We're just going to have to play it like a miracle, and just see what happens."

 And of course, the minute you play the truth of it ... I was lucky enough, I was on this ... that we had Kate Fleetwood on this plinth right in the middle of the Swan, and the amazing Linda Bassett, and Anton Lesser doing this scene. And me and Simon Harrison as Perdita and Florizel are observing the reveal. And we were in amongst the audience. We were sort of like the second step up, I think, on this plinth. So basically we were with the groundings. And without fail, it moved the audience to tears.

Paul Edmondson:            
 Actually I'm filling up just thinking about it now. It was so moving. It's always moving, but it was very moving, that particular production.

Michelle Terry:                  
Yeah. And I think, because Dominic said ... because we had exhausted all the things where ... you know that thing where you've got to help Shakespeare. So often I've heard, "Well, he needs a bit of help, doesn't he?" Or, "What are we going to do? And how are we going to conquer the text?" And just we went all around these different avenues. And then when Dom said, "We're just going to have to pay the truth," of course - when you just play the truth, because we want to believe in miracles. We want to believe in redemption. And that's what he gives us. That's where he's gone on this huge journey of writing these plays, by that he's gone through the maelstrom of [inaudible 00:07:29] and come out the other side going, "I think I have to believe in the human capacity for forgiveness." And that for me is what was epitomized in that moment. [crosstalk 00:07:36].

Paul Edmondson:             
Well I mean you were, especially as Perdita, caught up in that profound truth, because it's your mother coming to life.

Michelle Terry:                  
Yeah.

Paul Edmondson:             
Isn't it?

Michelle Terry:                 
Yeah, yeah. And the mother that I'd never known. That again, that's what's so amazing about him is another play starts in those moments, that there's another play beginning. Like go you ‘precious winners all’, ‘lead us from hence’. I mean those lines now, ‘lead us from hence’, and the part we've played since we were ‘dissevered’. There's a whole other play about to happen as a young woman has to renegotiate her whole identity of being motherless and now having a mother. And what on Earth are Leontes and Hermione going to talk about? It's all captured in that moment, but we're left to imagine what that conversation is. We're left to imagine what redemption and forgiveness look like. Yeah, it's amazing. So I learned to trust Shakespeare. I learned to trust the truth of him, to trust in the miracle of him, and that he does not need our help. He just needs our truth.

Paul Edmondson:             
Now there was another decade of basically being dedicated to the acting side, let's say, before you became artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe. Why did you become Artistic Director?

Michelle Terry:               
 The Globe had gone through a very particular episode in its still relatively young life. I think at that point in 2016 it was 20, 21 years, 20 years old, 20 years young. And kind of going back to what I was saying about that experience in the Swan and the experience that I'd had at the Globe, where there's no experience like it when the audience really are with you in that dialogue. And it always felt like, similar to the RSC, where artists really are the fuel for that work. And I’d just had the baby. When you're 38 years old and you're having a baby you're making a very conscious decision to sort of sit between the first part of your life and the second part of your life. And I had no real idea what the impact would be on my career. I had a career, but it's not like I'm ... There's no guarantee. I didn't have a name in film or television.

 So it was definitely a sort of crossroads in my own life. And I thought there's actually something really clarifying about a job application. I've never had to write a job application before. And it was freelancers, it's not what you do. I thought, "Actually, what can be the harm in putting to paper, committing to paper, where I'm at right now and what I believe in?" And that's what I did with the application, and just thinking it would go nowhere. And then got invited to interview, then got invited for a second round. And it was only in the third round where I'd met all the people that I'd known over 10 years, like meeting Glyn [00:10:39] and Giles and people that work in the organization, and then met some trustees.

 Got to the third round. And it was only then when Paul, my partner, and I were sitting outside this office block in the centre of London on a patch of grass trying to breastfeed the baby before I went into this audition ... Audition. See, ever the actor - went in for this interview. And I said, "There's only three of us." I said, "I think we might have to consider that there's a 33.3 recurring chance that I'm going to get this. And what does that mean for us?" And we just had a chat before I went in for this interview, because I definitely knew that I'd be marrying us all to this job. Like it's definitely a family endeavour. And I wouldn't want it any other way, because I wouldn't have applied if it wasn't my life. Like I said, I've known Shakespeare forever, and I love it, and I love the Globe. So that's what got me into that room. And that's ultimately maybe what got me the job.

Paul Edmondson:            
It's been an extremely significant three years so far already: your appointment, those wonderful roles you've played - Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Hotspur. And I wonder what you're most proud of so far during your time at this organization, which is a sort of marriage, as you just said.

Michelle Terry:                
  I think what I'm most proud of, not necessarily for myself, but as an organization: I really think we are now starting to get under the skin of what it means to have intersectional work. So it's not just diverse casting, but actually going, "What are the systems and structures that have created access for some people to these amazing plays and denied access to others?" And I think that's what I feel so passionate about. And again, it goes back to me as a seven year old girl who didn't know about the history, didn't know that I had no place in these plays. Didn't know I'd been denied a place in these plays. I so believe, and I think it's the tropes that we hear a lot at the moment, about the humanist writer, the universality of him, I do believe in that. I don't believe the access to that has been universal.

 So that's the bit that I really think we're now starting to get under the skin of: how do we make it possible. And our role in that as custodians, and the platform that we've got, to not just open the doors, but hold them open. And sometimes open the doors, realize people aren't coming in, and going to them and asking why. We're going into the 2023 year, the Folio year, we're coming out of a crisis that we know has been partly informed by climate change. What does the next 400 years of life on this planet look like? And Shakespeare's carbon footprint, cultural footprint is huge. He is the embodiment of the impact that human beings can have on generations. So I feel so proud that we're in a position where we can be really asking those questions.

 And I know that it's been a kind of interrogation in academia for a long time, but where that rigorous thinking is now starting to appear as action, and where those disciplines are meeting each other. So they're not separate to each other. How are we informing that rigor of thought with the rigor of practice? And that's what I feel excited by. So I suppose I'm proud that after one of the most devastating years, what I think all of us have been trying to do is till the soil, to not justify the place of Shakespeare on the curriculum or in these theaters, but actually start to ask, "Why should he be taught? Why should he still be performed in these playhouses? Why does he deserve another 400 years of exploration?"

 And the word ‘decolonize’ keeps getting talked about a lot at the moment, but I think we're decolonized around race, decolonize around gender, decolonize around thought, decolonize around language. And I've just come off a call with the amazing Nadia Nadarajah who's started her own relationship with Shakespeare through sign language. What I am excited by is how Shakespeare took these stories and exploded them. And that's what I feel so excited by. And when Peter Brook talks about every word as an atom, and we have to be so brave enough to crack the atom. I think we're just beginning to really do that in a very rigorous but intersectional way. That's what I'm excited by.

Anjna Chouhan:               
If you've been enjoying Shakespeare Alive, please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, or on your usual podcast platform. And if you'd like to suggest guests for us to interview in our next theories, please complete our survey by visiting shakespeare.org.uk/future. You can also connect with us on Twitter and Facebook, just remember to use the hashtag Shakespeare Alive.

Paul Edmondson:           
 I also wonder too, and I look to you with such admiration because you've managed to play these major roles as well as being Artistic Director, which is an unusual thing for an artistic director: could you comment a little on that please?

Michelle Terry:            
 Ignorance is bliss. Most artistic directors, I'm sort of speaking generally now and forgive anyone that's listening that this isn't true for, but you're surprised by it. Because nothing can prepare you for the intricacies of an organization. Nothing could have prepared me for what it means to manage people. I've never had to manage people. I've been a freelancer my whole life. I manage me in contact with other people, but I've never had to think about organizational structures and systems. The closest I get to is the ecosystem of a rehearsal room, which is very useful, because there's a microcosm of the macrocosm. Rehearsal rooms come with lots of different ways of operating. Some of it is very pyramidal and hierarchical, some is very democratic and ensemble. So I have models that can be sort of extended out to how an organization can work.

 But I think if I hadn't performed in that first season I may well have found it very hard to perform again, because you can get so caught up in the organization. It's been a challenge, because also lots of acting happens in the evening. So you're there doing the day job, and then doing the job that is your lifeblood. So it just became 24/7, which of course is not sustainable. So then how you're asking an organization to meet you and your [inaudible 00:17:28], and the needs of the organization, the business needs of the organization and all of that. And what's extraordinary is I think we were just figuring that out, and then COVID hit. And it was the greatest leveller. And I suppose the only blessing for me with that, as an organization, all of us went into a place of being wholly unqualified. So having spent most of my time as an artistic director, having huge imposter syndrome, feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know enough, I'm duh-duh-duh. Suddenly we were all in the same boat and thinking, "How are we going to emerge from this?" Yeah.

Paul Edmondson:           
  One of the things that we've seen, of course, are the significant increase of online events. Nine years ago The Globe was leading the astonishing Globe to Globe with all of those productions in different languages, the complete canon of Shakespeare in different languages being performed in the Globe for the World Shakespeare Festival. And then it's now Globe 4 Globe, which is a conference, an online conference, you introduced on behalf of The Globe. The Globe taking a lead with Shakespeare and climate emergency. Can you talk a little bit about that, please? And what you hope for from it?

Michelle Terry:                  
Yeah. I think with Greta Thunberg, with Extinction Rebellion, with Culture Declares Emergency, so this was the end of 2018, beginning of 2019. This conversation that has been happening for such a long time. And as we know, eco-feminism in Shakespeare, looking at Shakespeare, and ecology in Shakespeare is not a new conversation in the academic world, but it was starting to really become a conversation, a cultural conversation, in people's lives, really. I think there was an attempt to do it where sort of everyone's doing their bit to recycle and not use so much plastic and get a reusable coffee cup and take your bag to the supermarket, but really understanding the devastating effects of climate change. And of course, art's job is to explore these conversations. And as Shakespeare says, hold a mirror up to nature, but also hold nature up to the mirror. Where are these conversations in dialogue with each other?

 Anyone that knows As You Like It knows that this is absolutely the conversations that were happening in that place. Like, yes, it is a lovely pastoral comedy. And underneath there he's talking about urban regeneration, who owns the land, who has access to land? And it's not just As You Like It; anyone that has done Midsummer Night's Dream, and I'm lucky enough to have spoken those words that Titania says where, "We are their parents and original." This is a 400 year old conversation. That was pre-industrial age, the beginning of transatlantic sailing. We know the slave trade was beginning. So it really is the beginning of that brave new world, and the transformative impact of that, both for the good and for the bad of our planet.

 So it feels like a very natural conversation to be having with Shakespeare, where he doesn't just talk about nature, he believes nature has a language. There are ‘tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones’. The stones were weak. He really animates nature as something living and breathing. So it didn't feel like an imposed conversation on the text. It didn't feel like we were sort of interlopers into these plays. It was just another way of excavating the things that he was already talking about. So in 2019, we were just planning our 2020 season, and that was really going to be this introduction to the Globe 4 Globe symposium. We were going to start some research projects into the Globe's carbon footprint, about what is the carbon footprint of a sort of business as usual production, and what's the carbon footprint of an upcycle-recycle production? We had an in-house researcher come in that was just going to document how the plays are made, how artists, companies, how we're all getting to work, all of this stuff. That was going to be a huge research project.

 And it was going to be launched with the Globe 4 Globe symposium. And this EarthShakes Alliance, which is an alliance of theaters, think tanks all around the world, just continuing to not just talk about and not just have conferences about, but look at how do we put this work into action. But it still remains one of the most important conversations of our time. And it's sort of now or never conversation. And I'm sure we're all aware of the conversations that are happening around anti-racism at the moment. Just where does climate justice meet social justice and meet Shakespeare? We know that justice is one of the biggest things that he's tackling in these plays. Power, oppression, who has power, who doesn't have power, who owns the natural world, who doesn't own the natural world? And so the symposium was part discussion, part conversation, part presentation, and part performance where people are actually putting this into action. So we heard from the Willow Globe that have built this beautiful globe out of willow.

We heard from the HandleBards, that can only create shows with what you can get in a rucksack on the back of the bike. And then going into conversation with ourself, I suppose, ostensibly eco-theatre. We sort of look like we should be an eco-theatre. If we just did plays at two o'clock in the afternoon and relied on the sunlight, what would happen if we did that? And we're open air. We're also made of thatch, we're also at risk. I think we left in 2019 with one of the hottest summers on record. There were days when we had to really monitor what was happening in this essentially sort of wooden pizza oven. So there are very real risks. We're on the Thames. So where do the stories that we tell, and also the ways that we tell them, intersect when that's around social justice and climate justice? So the Globe 4 Globe was a beginning of that conversation, and the EarthShakes Alliance is a sort of in solidarity with movement that is just devoting practice and process to looking at these conversations.

Paul Edmondson:             
There's the connection, isn't there, with the University of Merced in California-

Michelle Terry:                  
Exactly. Yeah.

Paul Edmondson:           
  ... and their connection with the Shakespeare Festival in Yosemite National Park.

Michelle Terry:                
  Yosemite and Oregon festivals [inaudible 00:23:45] as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it will just grow and grow now. That's the hope.

Paul Edmondson:           
 How can people find out more about the EarthShakes Alliance, and what would you like us to do?

Michelle Terry:              
    If you just Google EarthShakes Alliance there's information on the Globe website. I think University of Merced are going to try and make available some of those conversations that happened over the weekend. So you'll be able to access some of the conversations.

Paul Edmondson:             
Coming back to Stratford-upon-Avon again, I wonder which of the Shakespeare houses you'd most like to live in and why?

Michelle Terry:               
   I love the countryside around Anne Hathaway's cottage. I used to run when I was in Stratford; it's so beautiful. It's such a beautiful run. Like where that house is positioned is endlessly inspiring. But still, the birthplace for me is the place where I really feel connected to him in a way that I don't in the other places. I was really lucky enough to do some short films. For 2016 The Globe did this complete walks, where they filmed just snippets from the plays, but in the location that they would have been written. And I got King John, and I'll just never forget the feeling of capturing some footage in the bedroom. And Hamlet's out at the moment, we're starting to understand his relationship to losing a child, the endless search for these twins, wanting these twins to reunite so desperately. Kind of the – this howl in these plays of the lost children, and wishing you could bring people back to life. Talking about Hermione. There's such a call for that. And I'm sort of getting emotional even thinking about it.

 We did the Constance speech, and just filmed in the bedroom, and ‘grief fills the room up of my absent child, puts on his looks, walks up and down with him, fills out his vacant garments with his form’. And of course on the bed are those garments laid out for the display. And I think I sort of understand him in that house.

Paul Edmondson:             
Thank you. And thinking about your own personal experience, perhaps if you were to deposit something in the collections of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the library, the archive, or our museum's collection, what would you choose to deposit and why?

Michelle Terry:                
  When I got the job one of my dear friends gave me a projector still. They just found one of these old ... like an old camera where you put filters in front of the thing, and you could project onto the wall images. And they had all these different stills of famous places. And they just had one projector still of The Globe, which they gave to me. And I've got it in my living room now. And when it catches the light, whichever position it captures the light it shows a different globe. And I think for me that sums up Shakespeare. So I think it sums up a very particular point in my life where I was very frightened, but I also felt ... Again, going back to the question before about what did you learn about Shakespeare, is trusting him. Like I was in the hands of somebody that absolutely knew what they were doing.

 And for me, this little still that you put in front of a camera screen, depending on which angle you hold the plays up to the light, they'll just show something different. So this little, tiny still just encapsulates that for me. So I think I'd put that in.

Paul Edmondson:             
That was beautiful. And we would welcome it with open arms. Because as you talk about it I'm thinking about how Shakespeare himself carried thoughts of The Globe around him while he was in Stratford thinking about the next play and what he was writing, and how excited he was about that great theatre that he was a shareholder in and the main writer for. All the time he was commuting back and forth. And time he was in Stratford he was carrying that sense of the theater and what it meant to him around with him, like you are.

Michelle Terry:                  
Yeah. And that architecture. There's something about ... We've just had some writers in the building, and of course as writers these days you're not asked to think architecturally. You sort of write a draft of your play and then hope a theatre will pick it up, and then you modify it depending on where it ends up. But he was thinking architecturally all the time in his plays, thinking elementally, thinking what it meant to be under the open sky and to be in nature and to being a building that is breathing constantly. These trees are breathing all the time. So yes, that's what I would give.

Paul Edmondson:            
 Michelle, I am breathing differently after this conversation. It's been truly inspiring. Thank you very much indeed. It's been a great pleasure speaking with you. And we wish you well with the next few months, year, the rest of your time as artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe. And it's been great to hear what you have to say. Thank you.

Michelle Terry:                 
 Thank you so much.

Paul Edmondson:             
You can find out more about the EarthShakes Alliance hosted by the University of Merced, and indeed the videos of the Globe 4 Globe Shakespeare in Climate Change Conference at earthshakes.ucmerced.edu/about.

Anjna Chouhan:             
Thank you for listening to this episode of Shakespeare Alive with Paul. Join me next week when I speak with Bill Barclay, former director of music at The Globe Theatre. If you'd like to find out more about the houses, collections, research, and education activity of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, head over to our website shakespeare.org.uk, where you can also make a donation to help us fulfill our mission to share Shakespeare's legacy with the world.