Art + Perservrance = the art of perseverance

Close up of original postcard with collage additions

I travelled back in time yesterday. I revisited the Globe theatre in London which we did actually visit in 2018.

This theatre is the third iteration of the playhouse made famous by William Shakespeare. The first was burnt down in 1613 during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. It was rebuilt the following year but was later closed down by the Puritans in 1642 and then dismantled 3 years later. The third Globe theatre was built on roughly the same site on the Thames riverbank in 1997, where it stands today.

In its heyday, there were plays staged at the Globe every afternoon. It’s no wonder Shakespeare kept writing - the demand for plays was strong and he was one of the shareholders in the building.

Shakespeare was an actor, poet, playwright and businessman.He adapted to the times he lived in. When outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague repeatedly closed theatres between 1602-1610, Shakespeare kept writing. For 20 years he wrote some of the best plays in the English language which continue to be performed today. He died in 161, aged 52. So young in today’s terms.

I thought of all this as I found a postcard depicting a stained glass of Princess Cecily, the daughter of Edward IV, from over one hundred years before Shakespeare’s time. Yet it seemed to capture something of those English times and was perfect to collage around.

By concealing most of the collage with torn paper bags and brochures from our visit to the Globe theatre, I was able to bring the focus to the woman’s face as she stared out from her torn paper frame. She became a portal into a time and place so strange to me and yet so real.

People lived, worked and loved hundreds of years ago. They wrote and acted in plays for the amusement and education of fellow Londoners. They were constantly putting themselves out for all to judge yet they kept going. Rebuilding the theatre when it burned down, adapting to political and social chaos and yet persevering until the last hurrah.

I think of that urge to create, to narrate, to be alive in a time of pestilence, turbulence and monarchy. Shakespeare saw it all, he wrote about it, acted and put his life into an edifice, the Globe theatre, which was eventually dismantled. Yet it has been reborn for us to travel back in time, when we are allowed to travel again. But for now a postcard, some torn paper collage and a recess’s face are reminders of art, and of perseverance.

The full postcard with all of its collage additions.