Engaging Audiences with Shakespeare
The Researchers
Stephen PurcellLink opens in a new window (English and Comparative Literary Studies) explores the scope and potential for direct audience engagement in Shakespeare’s plays via his research-informed practice with The Pantaloons, the professional touring theatre company he co-founded in 2004.
The Challenge
Shakespeare's plays can be inaccessible for audiences. Full-cast professional productions are expensive to produce, and they tend to be the preserve of high-culture institutions and major venues, often at high ticket prices. Smaller arts venues, meanwhile, are often struggling financially following the devastating effects of the pandemic, and audiences in some parts of the UK are barely served at all. In his work with The Pantaloons, Purcell has developed a dramaturgical approach that allows small-scale companies to stage these plays in such a way that the relationship between actor and audience becomes central to the performance. Over the years, this work has built audiences for Shakespeare in culturally under-served areas of the UK, engaged diverse audiences with high-quality Shakespearean performances, helped cultural venues to rebuild their audiences after the pandemic, and influenced theatre professionals in their work elsewhere.
Our Approach
Purcell has directed seventeen Shakespearean productions for The Pantaloons, including, most recently, Hamlet (2025), The Merry Wives of Windsor (2024), The Comedy of Errors (2023) and Much Ado About Nothing (2022). His work with the company has built on his extensive research into Shakespearean performance, which spans early modern and contemporary performance practices. It has resulted in the development of a number of approaches to Shakespeare in the rehearsal room and in performance that create new ways of engaging audiences with Shakespeare, and of building audiences for Shakespeare. These include game-based approaches to both rehearsal and performance, training exercises for actors that develop their capacity for engaging audiences, and dramaturgical strategies for editing and directing the texts.
Our Impact
The Pantaloons tour the UK extensively, reaching thousands of spectators annually. Each of Purcell’s Shakespearean productions tends to attract audiences of 5,000-10,000 over the course of its tour. The tour venues for these productions range from well-established theatres with a national profile (e.g. Shakespeare North Playhouse, Greenwich Playhouse) to small regional arts and community centres. In recent years The Pantaloons have developed their Community Touring Programme, playing a variety of non-theatrical as well as theatrical venues and reaching audiences for whom classical theatre is not often available. Purcell’s work with The Pantaloons has enabled venues to programme classical theatre at relatively low costs, varying their programmes and attracting diverse audiences. Purcell’s work has been instrumental in developing a dramaturgy which enables small-scale companies to engage audiences with high-quality Shakespearean performances. This involves incorporating theatre games directly into the structure of the show – in Merry Wives, for example, the actors solicited local references and other suggestions from the audience, working them into the performance. For a young reviewer at the Mill Arts Centre, Banbury, the technique created “an instant bond between the performers and the audience, drawing us into the action in a way I’ve never experienced with a Shakespeare play before”. Reviewers in local publications have felt the company’s style brings “both a seriousness and a sense of levity to Shakespeare” (Lichfield Live, 17 August 2022), producing “a night of theatre that I will remember for a long time to come” (Norwich Evening News, 1 October 2024). For one reviewer, “They way they involve the audience throughout is a rewarding experience and you end up feeling that you are an important cog in the machine… This one of the best productions of Hamlet I have ever seen” (St Albans Times, 24 July 2025).
