In honour of the 400th anniversary of the First Folio, we gather in the Globe Theatre for an ultra-live experiment, to recreate Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for one night only.

The First Folio is a collection of (almost) all the Shakespeare plays that we know of, and one of the most influential books ever published. Without it, many of Shakespeare’s most loved plays, including Twelfth Night, would have been lost forever.

In Shakespeare’s times, often actors had no access to the whole play script. Instead, they were given their lines on a scroll or a roll of paper (literally their role), with a few words that would be their cue: hence cue-script. They also didn’t have the weeks of rehearsal that we are used to now. For the most part, each actor would go away, learn their lines, learn their cues, and then turn up at the theatre ready to go.

Just the play, the players, and the most important character of all: you, the audience.

Now, 400 years later, we will attempt to do the same. Directed by Blanche McIntyre (Measure for Measure, 2022), a host of familiar faces are primed to learn their lines, familiarise their cues and step courageously into the unknown on the stage of our glorious wooden ‘O’. All you need to do is join us for a night that promises to be spontaneous, revelatory, and celebratory!

A Folio 400 special performance.

‘When my cue comes call me’

– A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Act IV, scene 1