Voices in the Dark: Pride, Then and Now. How relevant are Shakespeare and his contemporaries to

Voices in the Dark: Pride, Then and Now. 

How relevant are Shakespeare and his contemporaries today? That is the question we ask in Voices in the Dark, an ongoing festival of events and performances that run alongside our main-stage productions.

Voices in the Dark examines the nature of Shakespeare’s transformative impact on the world through an ongoing dialogue, a call and response, between today’s artists and Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

This spring in our latest iteration of the Voices in the Dark festival, Pride, Then and Now we respond to After Edward, in itself a response to Marlowe’s Edward II - a play that is rare in its depiction of a gay relationship on the early modern stage.

Moll and the Future Kings
Kicking off proceedings in spectacular style on 30 March is Moll and the Future Kings -  an hour of late-night drag king cabaret and improv, by candlelight.

Moll Frith, also known as Mal Cutpurse, fascinated her 17th-century audiences when, in 1611, she appeared on stage during a production of The Roaring Girl, Middleton and Dekker’s play about her life. An improvised moment involving rude jokes, songs and smoking, this is the only known professional playhouse performance by an English woman.

Performed by members of the Through the Door course, this work-in-progress, this experiment, this conversation with our queer early modern past celebrates Moll the cross-dressing performer, criminal and trickster and all those like her.

Curated by Sarah Grange with Clerkinworks, and supported by Shakespeare’s Globe and Improbable. 

Hear more about Moll and the Future Kings from event curator Sarah Grange and drag king Wesley Dykes in the latest episode of our podcast. Transcript available.

Buy tickets for After Edward in the same transaction and save £2 on tickets for Love is LoveandMoll and the Future Kings.

Wanton poets and pleasant wits: Edward II now
On 4 April, following the 7.30pm performance of After Edward, join us for a free post-show discussion chaired by our Research Fellow Dr Will Tosh.

Bringing together some of today’s most exciting queer thinkers and writers, we will reflect on the legacy of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II.

This event is free to ticket-holders for that evening’s performance of After Edward and also, subject to space in the auditorium, everyone else who is interested in attending without seeing the preceding performance.

Love is Love
On 6 April London’s a cappella LGBT+ choir, The Fourth Choir, returns to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in June 1969.

In a celebration in words and music of LGBT+ lives and loves, Love is Love roams through nine centuries taking influence from Hildegarde of Bingen in the 12th century to jazz legend Billy Strayhorn in the 20th.

Coupled with music by composers such as Poulenc, Tchaikovsky and Rufus Wainwright, Love is Love brings to life hidden histories: the woman put on trial in 18th-century Germany for marrying another woman; history’s most extraordinary bisexual love triangle; the famous composer who liked to wear drag; and the Stonewall Warriors themselves.

Buy tickets for After Edward in the same transaction and save £2 on tickets for Love is LoveandMoll and the Future Kings. 

Image credit: Ellan Parry

Sarah Grange, curator of Moll and the Future Kings and drag king Wesley Dykes discussed the inspiration behind the show on our podcast, Such Stuff .