In collaboration with Historic England and Southwark’s Archaeology Office (and with planning permission from Southwark Council) agreement has been reached regarding the best strategy for displaying The Rose Playhouse’s delicate remains, and the Trust is now embarking on a new chapter with an enhanced board membership.
Professor Kathy Dacre, the driving force behind the new £30m Shakespeare North Playhouse, has succeeded Harvey Sheldon as Chair of the Rose Theatre Trust. Eight new trustees with diverse experience and strong expertise have also joined the Trust. You can read about them here.
Their challenge, and the challenge of everyone involved with the Rose Theatre Trust, is to raise £3m before the summer of 2022 to fund the next phase of the archaeological project and the development of surrounding space, which has been designed by Helm Architecture and is known as the Rose Revealed Project. The Trust will accelerate its events programme and increase its activity on all media channels to spread news about the Project and to help with fundraising for the future of this Scheduled Ancient Monument.
If you are on Bankside please walk along Park Street and look at the scale of the building work happening at Rose Court. The facade of our site is currently behind hoardings with photographs and information boards about The Rose Playhouse. When work is completed the windows currently being installed will form the first stage of The Rose Revealed Project, as envisaged by our architect, Dr Nicholas Helm. The openings will be wider and allow us to advertise the site more effectively and will, in the longer term, enable the archaeological phase of The Rose Revealed Project to be completed. Although the work is taking longer than expected, we are excited that the first steps towards the completion of the project are being taken.
We will post regular updates here as things develop. Until we reopen, you can visit our Virtual Rose webpage, which contains links to 3D computer-generated reconstructions of The Rose as well as to online lectures about the playhouse and relevant performances.
Above all, please take the time to read more about the history of The Rose Playhouse on the website, stay in contact through social media, attend virtual events and, if you can, donate towards bringing the site to life again.
We’d like to thank everybody for their support of The Rose Playhouse webinars over the past 18 months, especially our wonderful guests and audiences around the world.
We are taking a break until the autumn, when we will present online events once a month; this means that the events team can restart live events on-site, but still engage with our all-important online audience.
When the time comes, we will be contacting mailing list members to invite them to the site. We will also ask if they would like to volunteer in some form to make the Rose Revealed Project move from a dream to a reality.
Gary Andrews will be returning on 14 December with a Christmas tale (Sherlock Holmes’s “The Blue Carbuncle”). We hope to see you there!
Join our friendly team as a Front of House staff member or an Open Day interpreter. As a volunteer you will contribute to our ongoing cause to educate and share the fascinating story of The Rose Playhouse. Find out more here.
