When William Shakespeare penned 'all the world's a stage' for his comedy As You Like It around 1599 - the same year London's Globe Theatre was built - he could scarcely have imagined that, more than four centuries later, his stage would become all the world.
As Britain hosts the Olympic Games this summer, it won't be just Hong Kong athletes who are limbering up to make their once-in-a-lifetime appearance. A troupe of actors from the city's Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio are preparing for a performance of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's grisliest drama. The play will feature in 'Globe to Globe', one of the artistic events shadowing the games as part of the Cultural Olympiad and the brainchild of Shakespeare's Globe, the company housed in the modern reconstruction of the original theatre.
'Globe to Globe' has set itself the daunting task of staging all 37 of Shakespeare's plays between April 21 and June 9, each given by a different company in a different language, including King Lear in Belarusian, Coriolanus in Japanese and The Comedy of Errors in Dari Persian. The National Theatre of China under Wang Xiaoying, its associate director, will take on Richard III, to be performed in Putonghua; Love's Labour's Lost will be given in British sign language by London's Deafinitely Theatre group; while South Sudan, the world's newest nation, will present Cymbeline in Juba Arabic.
Juxtaposing the linguistic and cultural differences will require flexibility, says David Workman, projects manager at Shakespeare's Globe. 'We're not going to be precious about other people's interpretations. 'Globe to Globe' is very much about what Shakespeare means to each individual company, so they will bring their own feelings and understanding about these plays to the festival. Some will be direct translations, some will be adaptations, some will not necessarily be full-length.'
The Q Brothers' and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre's production of Othello in hip hop (titled Othello: The Remix), however, will certainly be alternative.
Running alongside this one-off theatrical marathon is the Globe's ongoing commitment to its education and outreach projects, devised to secure future audiences and the reason Workman was in Hong Kong recently.
'We reach 100,000 people every year through our education initiatives,' the 26-year-old Oxford University graduate says, bolstering the vision of Sam Wanamaker, the late American director and actor who was the driving force behind the rebuilding of Shakespeare's Globe, completed in 1997.