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Radio 2 Book Club: Hamlet: Globe to Globe

Hamlet: Globe to Globe by Dominic Dromgoole will feature on the Radio 2 Fact not Fiction Book Club on Thursday 13 July.

We also have an exclusive extract available for your reading group.

Hamlet: Globe to Globe

In 2012, Dominic Dromgoole, the artistic director of The Globe, came up with an idea. He would take Hamlet to every country in the world. From 23 April 2014, 450 years after the birth of Shakespeare, sixteen members of the Globe theatre travelled to 190 countries (and via a series of performances in refugee camps, the peoples of 197 nations) in the space of two years. They performed the bard’s most famous tragedy across all seven continents in sweltering deserts, grand Baltic palaces and heaving marketplaces – despite food poisoning in Mexico, the threat of ambush in Somaliland, an Ebola epidemic in West Africa and political upheaval in Ukraine. They ended the tour in Denmark with a performance on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

Hamlet: Globe to Globe is the behind the scenes story of this incredible project, as well as an exploration of the world through the prism of Shakespeare. Through Dominic’s writing we see what the Danish prince means to the students of Cambodia, the effect of Polonius on the citizens of the tiny African nation of Djibouti and how a sixteenth-century play can touch the lives of Syrian refugees. By embracing the unfamiliar, facing and fighting barriers to reach as many people as possible, Dominic is able to showcase Shakespeare’s power to transcend borders, to touch the human heart, and how Hamlet can help our understanding of our changing world.

About the author

Dominic Dromgoole was the Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre in London from 2005 to 2016. He is the author of The Full Room: An A-Z of Contemporary Playwriting and of Will and Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life, which won the inaugural Sheridan Morley award. Dominic has recently launched a new film company, Open Palm Films and has made his first feature Making Noise Quietly. His theatre company with Nica Burns of Nimax, Classic Spring, will present a series of proscenium classics in the West End, starting with a season of Oscar Wilde plays from Autumn 2017.

Get involved

Tune in to the Jonathon Ross Radio 2 Arts Show on Thursday 13 July to hear the interview with Dominic.

Have you read Hamlet: Globe to Globe? You can share your thoughts with us on Twitter using #FactNotFiction.

You can see what other readers thought or add the book to your group’s reading list.

Want to find out more? Take a look at the Radio 2 Book Club Twitter feed or find out more on the Radio 2 Book Club website.

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