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Big news: Shakespeare is being exhumed in Shoreditch. Sort of. Last year, archaeologists began excavating the site where Shakespeare’s OG playhouse once stood. Called ‘The Theatre’ (it was the OG, after all), the venue was built on the outskirts of Elizabethan London, in ‘the suburbs of sin’, and pre-dated both The Rose and the Globe. A new permanent exhibition space is set to open on the old site and to drum up excitement for its arrival, the Theatre Courtyard Gallery will be hosting a two-day festival dedicated to Willy himself.
‘Shake It Up!’ is a Shakespearian sea change, offering something rich and strange, starting with a candle-lit choir concert in St Leonard’s Church, where you’ll hear Jacobean choral verse interwoven with tales from seventeenth-century England. On the bill are pop-up Shakespeare performances inside an archaeological tent, an afternoon of sword fighting and a chance to see what the playwright would have eaten for dinner at an aromatic lecture and a themed ‘Elizabethan Yoga’ class. If you thought the trend for ‘gin yoga’ was absurd, this one might just push you over the edge.
Look out, Southbank, this festival is out to prove that Shoreditch is the real London home of the Bard.