Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank: Macbeth
Digital Programme
DIGITAL PROGRAMME
A welcome from Director Lucy Cuthbertson and from Deutsche Bank, our partners for Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank
Learn more about the cast members and their acting careers, as well as their own first experiences of Shakespeare and his plays
A quick guide to the plot, a who’s who of the characters as told by the cast, and more in-depth views on ideas explored in the play
CREDITS AND THANKS
The cast, creatives, and production team behind Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank: Macbeth.
Poster image credits:
Photography by Rich Lakos
Art direction by Alexandria Vernon
Programme acknowledgements:
Digital programme design by Clare Nicholson
Digital programme built by Miranda K. Gleaves
CONTENT GUIDANCE AND ACCESS
Content guidance:
This production contains violence, stage blood and weapons, including knives and assault rifles; as well as loud gunshots and references to war. The production also contains depictions of murder, including infanticide.
Access:
For information about accessible performances, please refer to the main show page. For wider information about access and to explore our provisions for Deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent people, please see the dedicated Access area of our website.
WELCOME TO THE GLOBE THEATRE
Learn about our unique playing space.
When you stand in the Yard, or ‘the pit’, you step into the shoes of an Elizabethan ‘penny stinkard’. For a penny, people could see plays at the Globe without paying for an expensive seat. They would crowd into this large space right in front of the stage, often pressed tightly alongside the other spectators.
No other theatre today offers this experience of Shakespeare so up close and personal to the action. Being at the edge of the stage, engaging with the actors and seeing the action unfold right before your eyes, means the audience can be involved both as spectators and as participants in the performance.
What shape is the theatre?
It is an ‘icosagon’, a 20-sided polygon.
What’s the painting on the ceiling over the stage?
The twelve signs of the zodiac. We call this spot ‘The Heavens’.
What are the on-stage columns made from?
Each of the two big pillars on the stage is one oak tree. The builders had to measure lots of trees to find two just the right size.
What’s the theatre built from?
Oak beams, lime-plaster walls and a water-reed thatched roof – it’s the only thatched-roof building constructed in London since the Great Fire in 1666, and had to have special permission!
Why is it nicknamed ‘The Wooden O’?
It’s a reference in one of Shakespeare’s own plays – it comes from the Prologue to Henry V: ‘…. may we cram / Within this wooden O the very casques / That did affright the air at Agincourt?’