Secrets and stories from the world’s most famous theatre company
Welcome to The Play’s The Thing. In this exhibition, you can enter the ever-changing world of the Royal Shakespeare Company. From Titania to Tinkerbell, Rome to Wonderland, our Collection contains a huge number of objects that reveal the 100-year history of the company and our work here in Stratford-upon-Avon. This year the exhibition includes costumes worn by Ian McKellen as King Lear (King Lear 2007) and Alex Kingston as Prospero (The Tempest, 2023) and more for you to see.
Our work is rich with craft, creativity and imagination. We bring audiences joy through the plays on our stages and our work with communities and schools. The stories we tell help us understand ourselves, each other and the world we live in.
Curating with community groups
Three organisations in Stratford-upon-Avon have been working behind the scenes with us to select and respond to objects for this gallery. Groups from Warwickshire Pride, the Fred Winter Centre, and ILEAP (Inclusive Leisure Education Activity Project) – all co-curated the displays.
As the community groups visited and worked with us, they explored different objects in the collections that related to themes of identity, journeys and power, along with the idea of ‘possibility not disability’.
Other items on display in The Play's The Thing chosen by these community groups include:
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Costume worn by Juliet Stevenson as Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1981
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Costume worn by Ryan Gage as Player Queen in Hamlet, 2008
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Costume worn by Ben Kingsley as Othello in Othello, 1985
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Headdress worn by Liza Sadovy as the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, 2001
Beyond the Borders
Beyond the Borders is a spoken word film inspired by the play The Empress, by Tanika Gupta. Our production in 2023 was staged as a result of a campaign by our Youth Advisory Board, who hoped to diversify texts studied by school groups at GCSE.
In Beyond the Borders, members of Positive Youth Foundation, working with the Artist John Bernard, respond to our production of The Empress. The film addresses themes of home, identity, displacement, loneliness and uncertainty through the voices and opinions of Aicha, Atara, Angel, Elisha, Esther, Fortune, Georgia, Jada, Jaycey, Masumaa, Pele, Saffi, Selasi, Suzy and Terrol.
Positive Youth Foundation is a charity in Coventry that aims to raise the aspirations and life chances of young people who are facing challenging circumstances through their work.