Michelle Terry to play Puck in Globe's summer season as it cuts 50% of £5 tickets

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Shakespeare's Globe. Photo: John Wildgoose

Shakespeare’s Globe artistic director Michelle Terry is to play Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the venue, as part of a season that will see the number of £5 tickets offered cut by a half.

The theatre has announced £10 standing tickets, which will be on sale alongside its traditional £5 offering, in a move the theatre said was adding to its “economically accessible” offering.

The £5 standing tickets will be reduced by 50%, from 600 to 300, with the other 300 offered at £10.

Terry said that £10 tickets still represented good value when inflation was taken into account, given the £5 tickets were first introduced more than 25 years ago.

Terry said there had been "endless" discussions about removing the £5 tickets completely but added: "It’s my red line. There will be other conversations to be had with the regime change, as there is a reality. But for me to make the work, to be able to balance the artistic necessity of those plays and commercial running of this building, we have to be able to subsidise that £5 ticket."

She added: "We still have people who think Shakespeare is not for them. We have to make it economically accessible in order for us to make the work we believe in making."

Terry will appear in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Pentabus Theatre artistic director Elle While, from April. Terry plays Puck in the production, having previously performed the roles of Cordelia and Fool in King Lear, Viola in Twelfth Night, Hotspur in Henry IV, Lady Macbeth, Hamlet, Rosalind in As You Like It, Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Sean Holmes’ production of The Comedy of Errors follows, with Abigail Graham directing Macbeth in July.

Ellen McDougall’s As You Like It runs in August, while Midsummer Mechanicals, a follow up to the play within a play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream from Splendid Productions, plays in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse from July.

Terry said the company had initially intended the season to feature more productions, but admitted that this had not been economically viable, citing challenges the venue is facing.

"Inflation is real, the cost of materials is real – the cost of a production has gone up, wages have gone up, expectations have gone up. We are seeing audiences coming back, but we would normally budget for 80/85% capacity. There is no way of that now. We have put them in at 70% and we are worried about that – that is a precarious assumption," she said.

Terry warned the theatre had traditionally relied on advanced sales but described audiences as "unpredictable".

"People are not buying in advance as they can’t trust it’s going to happen, so the patterns you have relied on in the past you just can’t rely on," she said, adding that for the summer she needed a season that "absolutely works artistically and commercially" to subsidise work such as Timon of Athens at another time.

Terry said she was worried every day.

"We used to have a Covid WhatsApp group, now it’s just ’the WhatsApp group’. There is daily worry, but moments when you look back and think, we were worried about 2021 but we made it. We were worried about this winter and right now we are halfway through and alright," she said.

The Globe has also announced it will offer an associate director residency for 2023. Naeem Hayat and Indiana Lown-Collins will be resident associate directors, with their tenures commencing to coincide with the summer season.