We are 60!

On 18th February 1966 Faith and Patrick McEvoy set out from the family home in Hampton Hill, in a Mini with scenery precariously strapped to the roof and costumes and props squeezed into the back, along with Jenny and Mike, their two eldest children, and fellow cast members, to perform the first ever Globe Players show. The play, Peter and The Enchanted Princesses, was written by Faith. She had seen her son, Mike, in a tour of schools he had done with another company and had been unimpressed by the production. She thought she could write a better play, and so she did. And The Globe Players was born. Named, of course after Shakespeare’s Globe, though many years before the rebuilding of the original theatre on the Southbank.

This first venture was a success, and today The Globe Players are still touring schools every day of every school term.

After that first production the company grew and began visiting more and more schools. Patrick spent many hours at home writing to and phoning schools and getting bookings, Faith wrote and directed more shows, and Jenny and Mike performed. As the younger siblings, Jo and Tony, grew up and left school they joined the company too. Props were made in the sitting room, late night sewing sessions created the costumes, and chairs and sofas were pushed aside to make space for rehearsals.

1966 also saw our first production of Macbeth – the show that has been the most enduring of all the plays we have produced as a company. We did more than 150 performances of the Scottish Play alone last year. We currently have 6 different actors who play Macbeth, and 9 Lady Macbeths, with the latest of each currently in rehearsal.

The past 60 years have brought many adventures, with tours of Edinburgh, Paris, Rome and even visits to Iceland and Colombia! We are now a charity, and have a lovely office and rehearsal space in Kingston, packed with 60 years worth of props and costumes and the next two generations of the McEvoy family are involved. But the main work we do remains much as it was 60 years ago – packing the set, props and costumes into our van and setting off with a now wonderfully diverse cast of actors to perform theatre to children and young people in London schools. We are very often the first experience of live theatre for our young audiences, and we aim to foster a love of theatre in each new generation.