The Globe's Hamlet tour has been criticised by Amnesty for stopping off at North Korea. But theatre does not always legitimise its hosts – it can be a weapon against oppression
Doubts about the use of drama in the real-life theatre of war are at least as old as the second world war. Founded in 1939 to bring diversion to British troops, the Entertainment National Service Association rapidly found its acronym, Ensa, lampooned as "Every Night Something Awful", as well as suggestions that some of its productions could be employed as a weapon against the enemy to make them surrender.
An allied tactic – the sending of plays to controversial regimes – has now caused a row, with criticism from Amnesty International over plans for Shakespeare's Globe in London to include North Korea among the venues for its new staging of Hamlet. Amnesty's suggestion that the visit ignored the human rights abuses under Kim Jong-un and previous leaders irritated the theatre company. They pointed to their record of working with libertarian organisations and accused the charity of giving the impression that they were going out of their way to visit North Korea as a provocative one-off rather than stopping there on a large world tour.
The obvious reference point in any discussion about which stamps actors should have on their passports is the boycott of South Africa by the theatrical union Equity and other representatives of the entertainment industry, which ran from 1965 until the Mandela presidency. This was widely observed, although rightwing performers would occasionally mount tours of rickety farces as a theatrical equivalent of the "rebel" cricket tours to the country, which defied the parallel sporting boycott. The late Marius Goring, a former president of Equity, spent much time and money trying to lift the ban.
For most except Goring, though, there was a solid logic to the embargo on exporting drama to South Africa. The plays would be performed in venues operating a policy of segregation, with the result that touring productions participated in and legitimised apartheid. The governments during the discriminatory years also strictly censored the sort of material that was admitted.
Hateful as the North Korean regime is, the situation is significantly different. The Globe will presumably have no control over the makeup of the audience, but the choice of play is its own, and the use of Shakespeare's plays as a weapon against repression has an honourable history. As Professor James Shapiro discusses in his tremendous book 1599, Shakespeare wrote a play about political overthrow – Julius Caesar – during a period when England was feverish with fear about the end of the regime of Elizabeth I (a rumour of her death spread that year) and the possibility of invasion. Shortly afterwards, he wrote another play about a conspiracy within a rotten state: the one, in fact, that the Globe is taking to North Korea.
During the era of Soviet control of Eastern Europe, Shakespeare's political tragedies were often staged either overtly or covertly as coded commentary by dissidents. In Russian-run Prague, the Czech author and philosopher Pavel Kohout founded the Living Room theatre, which performed a reduced but politically very-pointed production of Macbeth. Tom Stoppard's 1979 short play Cahoot's Macbeth – in which a government inspector interrupts an undercover staging of the play – was inspired by, and dedicated to, Kohout's troupe.
The model of the South African boycott shows how denying entertainment to a regime can isolate and weaken it, but the possibility of drama as a discreet provocation is shown by both the Eastern European example and by a March 1985 visit to Turkey by the playwrights Harold Pinter and Arthur Miller (described in Michael Billington's biography of Pinter), when the dramatists challenged the prevailing political climate so fiercely that they were ejected from a dinner at the US embassy.
It is perhaps too much to hope of the Globe's visit to North Korea that Kim Jong-un himself will sit and watch a play in which a bloody usurper sits and watches a play that triggers his guilt. And there are clear risks of surreptitious censorship: will any synopses or surtitles for the local audience be full and accurate? But it was the admirable human rights group PEN that encouraged Pinter and Miller to go to Turkey, and Amnesty International might be sensible to see what effect Shakespeare's discreet political subversion might have in another country.
• Amnesty criticises Globe theatre's North Korea visit on Hamlet world tour Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
Doubts about the use of drama in the real-life theatre of war are at least as old as the second world war. Founded in 1939 to bring diversion to British troops, the Entertainment National Service Association rapidly found its acronym, Ensa, lampooned as "Every Night Something Awful", as well as suggestions that some of its productions could be employed as a weapon against the enemy to make them surrender.
An allied tactic – the sending of plays to controversial regimes – has now caused a row, with criticism from Amnesty International over plans for Shakespeare's Globe in London to include North Korea among the venues for its new staging of Hamlet. Amnesty's suggestion that the visit ignored the human rights abuses under Kim Jong-un and previous leaders irritated the theatre company. They pointed to their record of working with libertarian organisations and accused the charity of giving the impression that they were going out of their way to visit North Korea as a provocative one-off rather than stopping there on a large world tour.
The obvious reference point in any discussion about which stamps actors should have on their passports is the boycott of South Africa by the theatrical union Equity and other representatives of the entertainment industry, which ran from 1965 until the Mandela presidency. This was widely observed, although rightwing performers would occasionally mount tours of rickety farces as a theatrical equivalent of the "rebel" cricket tours to the country, which defied the parallel sporting boycott. The late Marius Goring, a former president of Equity, spent much time and money trying to lift the ban.
For most except Goring, though, there was a solid logic to the embargo on exporting drama to South Africa. The plays would be performed in venues operating a policy of segregation, with the result that touring productions participated in and legitimised apartheid. The governments during the discriminatory years also strictly censored the sort of material that was admitted.
Hateful as the North Korean regime is, the situation is significantly different. The Globe will presumably have no control over the makeup of the audience, but the choice of play is its own, and the use of Shakespeare's plays as a weapon against repression has an honourable history. As Professor James Shapiro discusses in his tremendous book 1599, Shakespeare wrote a play about political overthrow – Julius Caesar – during a period when England was feverish with fear about the end of the regime of Elizabeth I (a rumour of her death spread that year) and the possibility of invasion. Shortly afterwards, he wrote another play about a conspiracy within a rotten state: the one, in fact, that the Globe is taking to North Korea.
During the era of Soviet control of Eastern Europe, Shakespeare's political tragedies were often staged either overtly or covertly as coded commentary by dissidents. In Russian-run Prague, the Czech author and philosopher Pavel Kohout founded the Living Room theatre, which performed a reduced but politically very-pointed production of Macbeth. Tom Stoppard's 1979 short play Cahoot's Macbeth – in which a government inspector interrupts an undercover staging of the play – was inspired by, and dedicated to, Kohout's troupe.
The model of the South African boycott shows how denying entertainment to a regime can isolate and weaken it, but the possibility of drama as a discreet provocation is shown by both the Eastern European example and by a March 1985 visit to Turkey by the playwrights Harold Pinter and Arthur Miller (described in Michael Billington's biography of Pinter), when the dramatists challenged the prevailing political climate so fiercely that they were ejected from a dinner at the US embassy.
It is perhaps too much to hope of the Globe's visit to North Korea that Kim Jong-un himself will sit and watch a play in which a bloody usurper sits and watches a play that triggers his guilt. And there are clear risks of surreptitious censorship: will any synopses or surtitles for the local audience be full and accurate? But it was the admirable human rights group PEN that encouraged Pinter and Miller to go to Turkey, and Amnesty International might be sensible to see what effect Shakespeare's discreet political subversion might have in another country.
• Amnesty criticises Globe theatre's North Korea visit on Hamlet world tour Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.