Attendees: Melissa, theatre educator; Mal, Renaissance polymath; Gerry, RSC outreach worker; Russell, actor; Anna II, actor; Alison, opinion haver

Melissa: Shakespeare as raw material. Not in himself progressive or anti-progressive (I think he is both, in different places.) So for her it is about using Shakespeare to tell the stories we need to tell.

Russell: Came back strongly in favour of finding answers within the text rather than imposing ideas and concepts on a production. Referred to the Globe tour where the audience would choose that night's play. Sets and costumes, he said, were minimal: the actors and text communicated the play.

Mal: as a former designer and Early Modern theatre scholar, advocated for design as part of the story and the world. Minimal, portable, versatile design for a touring company is still design! Set design creates the world; costume design is part of the embodiment of character.

As sessions do, this one wandered: we discussed gender in Shakespeare, the Globe and audience connection in general; how we can reach unreached audiences; Shakespeare and accessibility.

Russell spoke about Shakespeare's rhetoric: how a speech builds to a point. In a world of tweets & Facebook posts, can Shakespeare teach us how to construct an argument?

Language alters thought; thought alters language. Shakespeare had his door open to the street and the pub. Can our streets and pubs have the door open to Shakespeare?

How we communicate Shakespeare is one thing. *What* we and Shakespeare communicate is another thing.

In so many plays, Shakespeare creates a world, then changes it. A ruler is replaced (dethroned, dies, abdicates).

Only a few plays involve regime change without a death. In As You Like It and The Tempest, a world is created which *shows* the bad ruler the error of their ways. *How do we create such a world?*

Other plays create a wrong or misgoverned world-- sometimes even on its way to destruction-- and then ask: in such a world, how do you do the right thing?

And I guess that's what I'm asking too. How, in this world, can we find the right things to say? To give a voice to what people are feeling right now, with the world in the state that it is?

More questions than answers. Here endeth the session.