Drama graduates not ‘exposed’ to enough Shakespeare, warns Globe artistic director

Michelle Terry, artistic director at Shakespeare’s Globe, warns that drama schools are shifting their focus to preparing students for careers in areas such as film and television, and are spending less time teaching Shakespeare as a consequence.

She acknowledges that drama schools are modernising, but shares her worries that students are not ‘exposed’ to enough of Shakespeare’s work, and have not has a ‘chance to say them out loud’, which she says is a ‘concern’.

‘It’s an ecology question and ecosystem question,’ she said at the Globe’s summer season launch. ‘Because drama schools are also a business, they have to go: “Where are students going to be making their money, where are they going after they leave drama school?”. And not only that, but they also need a certain percentage of alumni who are going to appeal to those people applying, saying: “Come here because Tom Hiddleston came here; Gemma Arterton came here”.’

She added: ‘They are not saying: “Gemma Arterton came here because she played the Duchess of Malfi in 2014”, they are saying she came here because she has a film career. You are paying a lot of money to go to drama school to presumably come out and get work, and there is not a lot of Shakespeare work out there, so there is a reality to that.’

She also stated that she regularly meets actors ‘who feel Shakespeare isn’t for them, or the Globe isn’t for them’.

‘There are rules [in Shakespeare’s work] – which are there to be broken – but in order to speak this language, you have to know what the rules are in order to then break them.’

‘I have spent my whole life studying these plays,’ she adds. ‘Most people are coming in not having been exposed to them, not having had a chance to say them out loud. So, there is a concern around that.’