Royal Shakespeare Company

The UK’s Royal Shakespeare Company is one of the best-known theatre companies in the world, performing in the town of Shakespeare’s birth and death, Stratford-upon-Avon, throughout the UK and on tour across the world, as well as engaging in extensive education and outreach programs.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is an ensemble company—everyone from directors, actors and writers to production, administrative, technical and workshop staff—all collaborating in its distinctive and unmistakable approach to theatre. The company employs more than 700 people who either work directly on producing and running the productions or within roles that directly support the work that takes place on stage.

The company aims to keep audiences in touch with Shakespeare as a contemporary—understanding his work through today’s artists, actors, and writers. The company’s repertoire not only includes the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries but classic plays by international dramatists and work by living writers. The company also produces extensive education and outreach programs to engage more people with Shakespeare’s work and live theatre.

The company has operated under its current name since 1961 but its roots go back to the building of the first permanent theatre in Stratford in the late 1800s. Her Majesty The Queen is Patron of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales is the Royal Shakespeare Company’s president and chairs the company’s Annual General Meetings.

For more about the Royal Shakespeare Company, visit www.rsc.org.uk