In December 2026, we co-produced a two-week R&D session on Will, a new play by Lucy Berry and Michael Corbidge about the life of young William Shakespeare. Michael and Lucy worked with actors Thalia Gambe and Jonny Wiles to develop the play, which seeks to introduce new audiences to Shakespeare in an accessible and exciting way. Many works of fiction have attempted to capture episodes from Shakespeare’s life. Though scholars have pieced together a reasonable amount of Shakespeare’s biography as it relates to his movements, finances, and practical life, details of his interior life as a playwright, a poet, a father, a husband, remain tantalisingly scarce. This scarcity has given rise to vast and varied speculation in novels as well as on the stage and screen. Hamnet, Shakespeare In Love, Born with Teeth, All Is True, Anonymous, to name but a few, have sought to fill the gaps in Shakespeare’s personal biography. Even Doctor Who has offered a playful speculation about the fate of one of Shakespeare’s lost plays, Cardenio. However close to the truth they may or may not come, all of these works offer us fascinating possible windows through which to imagine and interpret Shakespeare’s life. Though all significant and useful in their portrayals of Shakespeare, few of these works, if any, spend time considering his youth. They tend to be more interested in Shakespeare as his creative career is accelerating, or in “mid-season” Shakespeare enjoying the fruits of his literary and theatrical success. Will keeps these versions of Shakespeare in the future, and imagines him in his youth: as a student on the verge of taking his place in the world, one who is, in Shakespeare’s own words, “in standing water between boy and man”. This is a Shakespeare with his entire creative career ahead of him. This is a Shakespeare, in short, who has not yet become Shakespeare. When she meets him on a park bench in the twenty-first century, Portia does not know that the young man she dubs “Cheese Boy” will one day write Hamlet, King Lear, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Venus and Adonis. Perhaps the young man she meets has no idea either. In the play, Will has ideas that will eventually become Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and Pericles. Ideas are, however, all that they are: sparks and seeds that will grow with him into the greatest plays ever written. In the time-paradox in which they find themselves, Will meets a young woman whose parents have named her after the formidable Portia from The Merchant of Venice, and Cheese Boy will go on to name his Portia after the formidable girl he met on that strange afternoon. The two week period culminated in a sharing of the work, which fed into a discussion of the play’s themes and ideas, as well as means of making the text still more accessible to newcomers to Shakespeare. We are continuing to collaborate with Lucy and Michael on the next stages of Will, and we hope to be able to bring it to a wider audience in the near future.

In October 2025, we opened our production of Twelfth Night, directed by Bill Alexander, in collaboration with Compagnie du Passage. The show ran for a month at the Tabard Theatre in London, followed by a short run in Switzerland. During the London run, we ran two Thursday matinee performances which were reserved for state school students and other community groups to attend the show free of charge. On 9th October, we welcomed a group of year 5 and 6 students from Anson School, and on 16th October, we were joined by a group of beneficiaries from the 240 Project: a charity which helps homeless and formerly homeless individuals to participate in community activities.

A new six character version of A Merchant of Venice, adapted and directed by Bill Alexander at The Playground Theatre, Latimer Road, London W10 6RQ in late 2021. Cast Portia / Baltazar - Lena Robin Bassanio - Alexander Knox Antonio, The Merchant - John McAndrew Shylock - Peter Tate Gratiano - Alex Wilson Solania - Mary Chater