English playwright William Shake-speare is getting a language make-over at the Globe Theatre in London. For the first time, it is hosting 37 international companies, including two from India, to present all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays in 37 different languages. Theatre companies from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas will present plays in 37 different languages during the six-week drama festival, Globe to Globe, which is part of the World Shakespeare Festival due to run till November. The plays will be in languages as diverse as Maori, Korean, Shona, Arabic, Japanese and Zulu.

The six-week Globe to Globe festival will launch on April 21 just before Shakespeare’s birthday on April 23 and continue till June 9 at Shakespeare’s Globe, which was founded in London on the banks of the River Thames by American actor and director Sam Wanamaker. The replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre gets 350,000 visitors every season.
The festival, which will host five companies from South Asia, will present Twelfth Night in Hindi, All’s Well That Ends Well in Gujarati, The Taming of the Shrew in Urdu, The Tempest in Bengali and The Comedy of Errors in Dari/Persian.
Describing the process of selecting the companies and the plays, Tom Bird, festival director for Globe to Globe, says: “We started with a list of languages spoken in London and then with a list of countries that have a tradition of translating Shakes-peare in local languages. Then we started to shortlist groups we would like to work with and with these criteria we arrived at the best possible list of the plays and performers.”
Each theatre group will be in London for a week as they will arrive in London and use three days for rehearsal and have performances on two days and then return home. For the first time ever, a Shakespeare play will be performed in its entirety in British Sign Language. Definitely Theatre from London will translate the pun-riddled comedic text of Love’s Labour’s Lost into sign language for the unique presentation at the festival. The only English play will be Henry V, which will then continue for the full season at the Globe.
Led by artistic director Atul Kumar, the Company Theatre from Mumbai will present a new interpretation of Twelfth Night in Hindi at the Globe. The 18-year-old group, which performs regularly at the Prithvi Theatre, had recently toured the UK with Hamlet: The Clown Prince.
Mumbai-based Arpana group, founded 25 years ago, will present All’s Well that Ends Well in Gujarati in the style of the Bhangwadi theatre. Britain has a large Gujarati diaspora and there are about 46.1 million speakers of Gujarati worldwide.
Lahore-based group, Theatre Wallay, will present The Taming of the Shrew, starring Pakistani and film and stage star Nadia Jamil at the festival in Urdu. Bangladesh’s prestigious Dhaka Theatre will perform The Tempest in Bengali.
The most interesting theatre group from South Asia is Roy-e-Sabs from Afghanistan, which will present The Comedy of Errors in Dari. The group had performed Love’s Labour’s Lost in 2005 at an ancient garden in war-ravaged Kabul, close to Mughal dynasty founder Babur’s grave.
The Globe, which has a £60 million turnover, is now adding a Jacobean indoor Playhouse in the complex, which in the old tradition will have all the performances lit only be candlelight.