What’s on
Join us for talks, play readings, open days, costume demonstrations, guided walks, and more…
Some events are online, some take place on the site of The Rose Playhouse itself.
We are yet to open on a daily basis, but will do so just as soon as we can.
Just by buying a ticket you are helping to support our mission, so please do come along!
On next:
CAROL CONCERT
Saturday 6th December 2025
2pm at The Rose
CAROL CONCERT
An Afternoon of Music and Song
ORGANISED BY THE FRIENDS OF THE ROSE
Celebrate Christmas at The Rose with the return of the annual Rose Friends and Family Seasonal Celebration!
Entry includes mince pies and warm mulled wine.
Audience participation will be encouraged...
And there will be some very special prizes in our fundraising tombola.
We are very excited to celebrate the season with special guests the Hi Lo Singers!
You may have heard some of them singing the national anthem before the recent England v Australia rugby match at Twickenham, or singing on Angus MacRae's soundtrack for Mrs Warren's Profession at The Garrick Theatre earlier this year.
Please note that The Rose has no heating, so do dress warmly.
Tickets:
£15 public / £12 Friends & guests
ONLINE TALK
Monday 8th December 2025
6.30pm online
BEASTS OF BANKSIDE
Dr Liam Lewis
Dr Lizzie Wright
& Professor Hannah O’Regan
What were the lives of the animals involved in bear-baiting on Bankside like? And where do we find the origins of this cruel spectator blood-sport in England?
The Rose Playhouse stood close to animal-baiting arenas, and Philip Henslowe, its owner, and Edward Alleyn, its star actor, lobbied hard to become the Master of the Bears in the late 1590s, and formally received the title in 1608.
Bear-bating was a very popular entertainment in early modern England, with bearwards travelling the country with their animals. As a practice, however, it had much longer medieval roots, which can be seen archaeologically and in literature.
Join some of the team from the Box-Office Bears project – which has studied bear-baiting on Bankside and beyond – as they present the results of their investigations so far, gleaned from the archives and the bones of the animals themselves, including the bears and the dogs.
Dr Lizzie Wright is a zooarchaeologist and Research Fellow at the University of York.
Dr Liam Lewis is Lecturer in Medieval Literature at the University of Cardiff.
Prof. Hannah O'Regan is an archaeologist at the University of Nottingham.
Tickets:
£8 / £5 students & Friends
Woodcut from Antibossicon (1521)
by William Lilly.
Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
DISCOVERY DAY
Join us at The Rose to discover how Twelfth Night was celebrated in Shakespeare’s day.
The Christmas holiday in the UK now lasts only a couple of days, whereas then, alongside the religious rituals, everyone stopped work for twelve full days of feasting, games, dancing, and plays. And The Rose was packed with revellers.
The final night was the biggest party of them all…
So come along for a taste of an Elizabethan Twelfth Night. Ruling over the festivities will be King Bean and Queen Pea, selected in the time-honoured way by two lucky guests finding a bean or a pea in a cake.
Saturday 3rd January 2026
1pm & 3pm at The Rose
TWELFTH NIGHT CELEBRATION
ORGANISED BY THE FRIENDS OF THE ROSE
Please note that The Rose has no heating, so do dress warmly.
Tickets:
£10 public / £7 Friends
Coming to an event onsite at The Rose?
For information about your visit:
You can download our FREE DIGITAL GUIDE to use during your visit, or to explore The Rose virtually anytime, anywhere.
The Rose Sonic Trail: A Playgoer’s Journey
Step into the shoes of an Elizabethan playgoer with this immersive 75 minute audio walk that begins and ends at The Rose.
It is 1594, and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is playing at The Rose. Explore the local area with one of the actors, Jonathan Singer, as your guide, and encounter the stories, sounds, and characters of Philip Henslowe’s London.
You may be surprised by what you hear!
