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:
ONLINE TALK
Monday 12 January
CANCELLED
TINA PACKER
Founding Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company
Join legendary theatre director Tina Packer, founder of Shakespeare & Company in Western Massachusetts, as she traces the emergence of theatres in Elizabethan London.
Why were there no playhouses in London for hundreds of years, and then in a very short period the city was packed with them? How did they know how to build playhouses? And where did all those playwrights come from? How did the Tudor education system and the Art of Rhetoric lead to the proliferation of playwrights? How did England create its own unique way of building playhouses? And what can modern theatre-makers learn from the Rose’s archaeological remains?
Tina will draw on her many decades of experience founding and leading one of America’s foremost Shakespeare theatres, and share the discoveries made while performing in their ‘Rose Footprint’ performance venue, based on the dimensions of the original Rose Playhouse.
BIOGRAPHY
Born in England, Tina trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, performed in regional theatre around the UK, in television series for the BBC and ITV, and became an Associate Artist at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She arrived in the U.S.A. in 1974, and in 1978 she co-founded Shakespeare & Company. She has worked for the Company ever since.
She has directed all of Shakespeare’s plays, acted in eight of them, and taught the whole canon at more than 30 colleges, including Harvard, M.I.T., NYU, and at Columbia University where she taught in the MBA program for four years. She is the recipient of numerous awards and six honorary degrees, including the Commonwealth Award.
A forthcoming book about her directing work, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Tina Packer by Katharine Goodland, will be published by Bloomsbury-Arden for their Shakespeare in the Theatre Series.
THIS TALK HAS BEEN CANCELLED
We are deeply saddened to learn that Tina passed away yesterday, Friday 9 January.
Those who have bought tickets for this Monday's talk will be refunded along with any donations made.
Our deepest sympathies to her family, friends and colleagues.
ONLINE TALK
Monday 26 January
6.30pm online
DOMESTIC TRAGEDY AT THE ROSE
Dr EMMA WHIPDAY
Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at Newcastle University
Presented in conjunction with Literature Works
Before true crime drama, there was domestic tragedy: a genre that flourished in the 1590s and early 1600s, inspired by a sensational series of recent murders.
Domestic tragedy was a radical genre because it placed the loves, sufferings, and crimes of ordinary people centre stage. At a time when ‘tragedy’ meant tales of kings and conquerors, of royal courts and battlefields, these plays showed that an everyday English home could be worthy of the dramatic reach of tragedy: from the earliest surviving true crime drama, Arden of Faversham, to Thomas Heywood’s fictional adultery play A Woman Killed with Kindness.
Yet not all of the domestic tragedies that were performed onstage were memorialised in print: along with Page of Plymouth, missing domestic tragedies include Keep the Widow Waking, The Cruelty of a Stepmother and The Stepmother’s Tragedy. This talk will explore this fleeting and ephemeral, yet significant, genre.
Tickets:
£8 / £5 students & Friends
In association with Literature Works
and the Page of Plymouth project
Literature Works is a charity and an Arts Council England National Portfolio organisation in Southwest England.
Its Page of Plymouth project is centred on the lost play by Ben Jonson & Thomas Dekker (performed at The Rose in 1599), and explores stories about gender, justice and ordinary lives in Plymouth both then and now.
DISCOVERY DAY
PLAY READING
Saturday 7 February
2pm at The Rose
TAMBURLAINE PART ONE
by Christopher Marlowe
Organised by The Friends of The Rose
Join us at The Rose to watch or take part in a one-hour long play reading of Tamburlaine part one by Christopher Marlowe.
Written in 1587, the play was a sensational success and launched Marlowe's career on the public stage. He quickly wrote a second part, and the two plays were published together in 1590.
Set in 14th & 15th century Asia, it dramatises events in the life of Timur (1336-1403), who, as the original title page puts it: "from a Scythian shepherd, by his rare and wonderful conquests, became a most puissant and mighty monarch. And (for his tyranny, and terror in war) was termed the Scourge of God."
The session will start with a brief introduction to cue scripts – what they were, and how Elizabethan actors used them to learn their parts.
For those choosing to take part in the reading, roles will be drawn from a hat 20 minutes before the start of the play, and scripts will be provided.
Tickets:
Watch - £5
Take part - £10 / £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!
