THE CONTROVERSY AT THE GLOBE—-MAYBE IT WAS REALLY ABOUT THE LIGHTING AFTER ALL. From a distance, it seemed to me that the announcement that the board of the Globe determined that: “…future productions will now see a return to simulating original light conditions as closely as possible.†was creating a pretext (the lighting issues) to paper over angry feelings on both sides. (After all, Emma Rice had said some very harsh things about Shakespeare).
This interview in Time Out London by Andrzej Lukowski of Mark Rylance (who was the founding artistic director of the Globe) suggests that the lighting issue was critical. Rylance said that both parties “have been struggling all summer to find a way to avoid having this divorce….But if one style of production prevents everybody else from doing any other kind – which was what happened this summer – it was impossible to do anything else in there, that was a difficult situation.”
Lukowski says: “In other words (and as he confirmed again after the interview) Rylance’s take is that Rice wouldn’t allow any non-amplified productions at all (in part because it would be physically impossible to take the sound and lighting rigs down in time to allow ‘shared light’ production to run in rep) and no compromise was found.”