I was never the biggest fan of Shakespeare. It’s not that I didn’t like his work, I did, but it didn’t provide for me the visceral reaction that it prompted in so many of my peers. It fell for me into a similar category as Pulp Fiction: certainly great, but for me, not as amazing as other people made it out to be. So, seeing a play at the Globe was certainly exciting, but I wasn’t initially jumping out of my seat at the thought of the experience. We were seeing “Much Ado about Nothing” a play that I had never read and in all honesty, wasn’t at all familiar with, but the group seemed very excited, so I fed off of that. We began the day with a tour of the Globe and a brief history lesson which immediately made me more interested in what was to come later. We were able to go into the theatre before the performance and take a look around. As we were sitting and listening to our guide, the performers were warming up behind us, doing vocal and kinesthetic exercises to prepare themselves for what was to come in the next few hours. Initially it was comical, hearing the blurt out animalistic sounds, practicing lines to no one, and dancing to nothing. But once I got over the initial comedic discomfort, I began to appreciate both the process, and the fact that they were willing to allow us to see them in what most would consider a fairly vulnerable moment.
The play began shortly after, and it took me a while to get into the groove of it. Perhaps it was the fact that I had never really seen a play performed like this, or that I didn’t know the story too well, or being able to catch certain dialogue with the accent, but I couldn’t quite enjoy it for the first few scenes. But not too long after, I was reeled in. I started to feel entirely immersed in the atmosphere of the Globe and the play itself. The words that were previously on a page came alive, and had faces and voices that were previously just constructed in my head. The audience became a part of the play through both their reactions to what was happening or they would quite literally become a part of the performance. The actors were feeding off of it, catering their lines to the crowd’s reactions to create and inclusive and intimate atmosphere. The audience felt a part of the comedy and drama that was unfolding before us. I began to understand how other people felt when they read the plays—I just need to see and feel them performed.
And then, similar to what happened multiple times in the various churches we visited, I started to feel as if I was in a very roundabout way, participating in history. While the Globe had been remodeled and changed multiple times from when Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed, I felt transported in a way. I could imagine the packed theatres on weeknights or weekends. I could see the crowd laughing and cheering and on occasions booing. The Globe created such and atmosphere that I felt as if I were meant to be there and begin to understand the feeling that Shakespeare’s plays have for everyone else. If there was one thing I would say was the best experience of the trip, and something I would go back for again, it would be the Shakespeare play at the Globe.