Shakespeare’s Globe makes £3.6m reaching 1 million people

Touring productions, West End revivals and live and recorded cinema screenings complemented the live performance programme based at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2013, enabling the organisation to reach a million people and generate a turnover of £21m and a surplus of over £3.6m. The Globe, which is an educational charity “dedicated to the experience and international understanding of Shakespeare in performance”, receives no annual public subsidy and the surplus will be reinvested in its not-for-profit activities, including Globe Education, one of the UK’s largest arts education programme. The Globe’s 2013 Annual Review also reveals that the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the new candlelit indoor theatre located at the Globe site on London’s Bankside, was completed within 8% of its original budget: £7.3m of the target £7.5m fundraising target for the new space was met on schedule for the venue’s November opening.

Corporate partnership support and donations accounted for only 11% of the Globe’s annual income, the rest being generated from its “mission-based and commercial activities.” Three quarters of the income came from ticket sales and admission charges, though 42% of tickets were priced at only £5. Core Shakespeare plays proved the most popular, with The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth playing to 96% capacity, and the complete Henry VI trilogy to 85%. But new writing also attracted big audiences, playing to an average 71 percent capacity. A number of areas of activity saw high levels of growth over the previous year: a 45% increase in audiences for Globe Education’s programme of public events; a 21% growth in theatre tours and exhibition visitors; and the profitability of retail and catering grew by 41%. Chief Executive Neil Constable commented: “We are delighted that more than a million experience Shakespeare through the activities of Shakespeare’s Globe.  Its pre-eminent role in presenting Shakespeare will be enhanced by our major achievement of 2013, the completion of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, realising our founder’s vision for an indoor Jacobean theatre on site.”