Dominic Dromgoole, Artistic Director
Dominic Dromgoole /Photo: Sheila Burnet
Dominic Dromgoole is the Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre in London. Born into a theatrical family, he studied English at Cambridge University, began work as a part-time assistant director at London’s Bush Theatre, and rose to become artistic director there (1990–7). He directed new plays for Peter Hall’s company at the Old Vic and then took over at the Oxford Stage Company (1998–2005). In 2006 he succeeded Mark Rylance as artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe. His publications include The Full Room: An A-Z of Contemporary Playwriting (2001), and a memoir, Will and Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life (2006).
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Audio Excerpt
Shakespeare is known for his incredible writing, but sometimes one may come across some really awful patches. Dromgoole explains why those bad patches of writing are there, and how Shakespeare was able to move past them.
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Interview Excerpts
ON INTRODUCING KIDS TO SHAKESPEARE
DOMINIC DROMGOOLE: I think the best and only way to introduce Shakespeare to kids is through performance. I think it comes alive in performance – its surface comes alive and its subterranean currents come alive when it’s there and happening on stage, in ways that kids immediately relate to. I think if you give it them as something on a page, which is a piece of literature, it rather intimidates them and it rather shuts them out. And they think that it’s something heavy and portentous and terrifying. Whereas if they see it being played out in whatever form, it comes up sort of fresh and new and alive. And it happens for them. And they can trace in it — some of the substructural roots of it, are very similar to stuff that goes on in their own lives, but also in their own reading — in fairy tales and in mythic stories and in any story that has, you know, an element of ritual to rite to it. The same sort of structure is often underneath Shakespeare’s plays and they respond to that very quickly. Most kids’ stories start with parents dying and a lot of Shakespeare’s plays start with parents dying, or parents being dispossessed, or dispossessed of them. And kids very quickly, and endurably relate to that. Hamlet is the ultimate – often. He lost his father. Othello – the beginning of Othello is Desdemonde is being taken away from her father. And so, you know, that familiar pool, that kids adore, of tales about people who’ve lost their parents is very often present in Shakespeare. I think my kids – to hear – they love it. I mean, from the age of four they’ve been watching Pericles or A Winter’s Tale or Measure for Measure. And they completely adore it.
ON IMAGINATION
DOMINIC DROMGOOLE: So, an actor comes out and says, “I am Hamlet. This is Denmark,” and says it with utter reality and there’s nothing behind him to defend it – there’s nothing Denmarky around – so you, as a member of the audience, have to go to that place and you have to say, “Okay, you are Hamlet. And that’s Denmark. And I’m there with you” And that’s something huge and liberating and exciting.
That is one of the reasons why this theater has become . . . that’s one of the reasons why this theater had created such a sort of revolution in theater making, because it’s gone back to that sort of old source of tapping the audience’s imagination rather than giving them a reality and saying, “This a reality you have to live with.” You’re saying to them, “Let’s all make something together.”
Which is Shakespeare’s way of writing. It comes on at the beginning of almost every scene, he tells you, “This is the night time,” or “This is a hot day,” or “Here we are in Ileria,” or “Here we are in Sicily,” or wherever. And he invites you to go to that place with him. And it’s that sort of collaboration which is huge in Shakespeare and which is very good for the imagination.
ON THE RUBBISH PATCHES
DOMINIC DROMGOOLE: It’s something that Peter Hall said to me when we were working together, which was something that he described as the first ten lines of the day. Which was the bad patches in Shakespeare, and the rubbish patches in Shakespeare, when, you know, he woke up in the morning he was a bit hung over and a bit grumpy and a bit sour, and he sat down and no desire to write but thought he ought to because he had to make the money, and so he started writing and the first ten lines of the day are by and large awful and they’re rubbish and they’re all these patches of writing that you stumble across in Shakespeare’s play where there’s just nothing going on, or it’s nonsense.
And he’d write those first ten lines of the day very slowly and very deliberately and very pluckily and with a great sort of excess of effort. And then suddenly something would stir in his imagination and something would click in his heart, in his mind, and he’d just start moving a bit quicker with his pen – after ten lines. And then after another ten lines he’d just start flying and this great sort of heap of imagery and thought and wisdom and insight and poetry and romance and emotion that was swelling around inside him – all the time – would just suddenly flower. And his pen would be flying and he’s be writing, you know, at the pitch that we know and love.
But what’s lovely about Shakespeare is that he wasn’t a great editor, he wasn’t a great reviser – he didn’t go over his work and change it – so you still got those little lumps of crap, all the way through. And also, occasionally he just wrote with his eyes shut. He just thought, “I’ve got to from here to here, I’m just going to write it down, because I don’t want to be in this moment, I want to get to the next moment, so I’ll just write a bridge to get me there.” And it’s terrible.
