Hamlet to be staged at ‘Jungle’ camp

By April, the Globe’s production of Hamlet will have played in every country in the world

Shakespeare’s Globe is to stage a performance of Hamlet at the migrant camp in Calais known as the “Jungle”.

The event, on 3 February, is part of a two-year long world tour of the production which recently included a show for Yemeni refugees in Djibouti.

Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole said it was “another wonderful example” of the tour’s “ability to reach displaced people”.

About 6,000 people live in the “Jungle” in dangerous and unsanitary conditions.

The production is being staged in partnership with Good Chance, a theatre company based at the Calais camp.

Its artistic directors, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, said: “As a production which has travelled to audiences all over the world, it is fitting that it visits the camp here in Calais, where the fault lines of over 20 different nations meet.”

Good Chance established a makeshift theatre in the Jungle camp

Last December, Mr Murphy told the BBC that the need for intellectual stimulation “follows hot on the heels of [the need for] food and shelter”.

“We’re here for the people who need stimulus… they are in an environment that is not providing any excitement [or] nourishment for the brain.”

After performances in Paris and Monaco, the Globe to Globe production moves on to Malta on 8 February where the audience is expected to be made up of Libyan migrants.

The organisers say that by the time the tour ends in April they will have staged the play in every country in the world.

The finishing date, 23 April 2016, is 400 years since Shakespeare’s death.

BBC