In the week that the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) new season opens in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Company today released further details of its 2022 activity including three new Shakespeare productions that speak directly to our world today, the launch of TikTok Tickets - a major new partnership with the global entertainment platform TikTok to inspire the next generation of theatre audiences wherever they live, plus details of how people can participate in 37 Plays: a nationwide search to write the stories of today co-created in partnership with the RSC’s network of 12 regional theatre partners, over 200 Associate Schools and freelance artists who together form the Royal Shakespeare Community.


The Company also renewed its commitment to ensuring every young person has access to an arts-rich education and will create a new Shakespeare curriculum available free for all to use from 2023. Evidence clearly shows the impact that an arts-rich education has on young people to support their development, accelerate language acquisition, improve attitudes to learning and their life chances.
• Arthur Hughes to play the title role in a new production of Richard III directed by Gregory Doran in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

• Blanche McIntyre to direct All’s Well That Ends Well for the social media generation in a new production exploring themes of romantic fantasy, toxic masculinity and consent.

• First Encounters with Shakespeare: Twelfth Night a new production directed by Robin Belfield created in partnership with young people from communities across the English regions to tour to UK theatres and schools including Stratford-upon-Avon.

• TikTok Tickets: a new initiative to open access to high quality theatre for young people targeted particularly at those living in communities facing structural disadvantage. The £10 TikTok Tickets are available for all RSC productions for any 14 -25 year olds, students and state schools.

• 37 Plays: Writing the stories of our nation: Details released for adults and young people to participate in a major new national playwriting project to capture the stories of today.

Erica Whyman, Acting Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company said: “I am delighted to announce this bold creative programme, spanning a ground-breakingly ambitious partnership project to find the UK’s plays of today, investment in our collaborations with young people and the very proud completion of the canon of Shakespeare's plays we began in 2012.
“Across ten unforgettable years, our commitments to partnership, to inclusion and justice, and to innovative ways to share our work have deepened and evolved. All three are demonstrated in this announcement, and our new collaboration with TikTok perfectly illustrates our determination to entice new audiences.
“I'm delighted to welcome back the visionary Blanche McIntyre for All’s Well That Ends Well, and thrilled by the pairing of Arthur Hughes and Gregory Doran who together will breathe new life into Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Richard III”.
Gregory Doran directs Shakespeare’s final instalment of the vivid and enthralling story of the brutal struggle for the English crown, Richard III, running in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre from Thursday 23 June to Saturday 8 October 2022. This premiere features Arthur Hughes in the title role of Richard following his RSC debut in Wars of the Roses on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage in Spring 2022.
Arthur is best known for his roles as Ryan McDaniel in supernatural Netflix series The Innocents, Ruairi Donovan in BBC Radio 4 series The Archers, and was most recently seen in Jack Thorne’s Channel 4 care-home drama Help with Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham. Arthur’s previous stage credits include La Cage Aux Folles (Park Theatre), Our Town (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London) The Solid Life of Sugar Water (NT/Graeae Theatre Company), Saint Joan (Donmar Warehouse), Vassa (Almeida), Julius Caesar and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Sheffield Crucible).
Arthur was recently announced as a co-lead in the ground-breaking new disabled civil-rights drama Then Barbara Met Alan which will air on BBC Two and iPlayer in Spring 2022. Written by multiple Bafta-winner Jack Thorne, and award-winning actor-turned-writer Genevieve Barr, the film tells the story of two disabled cabaret performers, Alan Holdsworth (Arthur) and Barbara Lisicki (Ruth Madeley) who met at a gig in 1989 and would go on to become the driving force behind DAN - the Direct-Action Network, whose fearless and coordinated protests pushed the campaign for disabled rights into the spotlight.
Arthur said: “It’s no exaggeration to say that playing Richard at the RSC is a dream come true. Richard is the most murderous and charismatic character in Shakespeare's plays, and… he’s disabled! I’m thrilled not only to be playing this title role at the RSC, but also that a major production of this play is putting disability centre stage. It’s sadly rare in many plays to find a leading disabled character, and with this production I hope we prove that disabled talent deserves to be in the spotlight."

Gregory Doran’s recent RSC productions include Measure for Measure (2019), The Boy In The Dress (2019) Troilus and Cressida (2018), The Tempest (2016), King Lear (2016), Death of a Salesman (2015), Henry V (2015), Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 (2014) and Richard II (2013). Set and Costume design is by Stephen Brimson Lewis.
Gregory remains on compassionate leave from his role as Artistic Director. He is currently co-directing Henry VI: Rebellion with Owen Horsley which opens in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre on 1 April 2022.
Blanche said: “I am so excited to have the chance to direct Shakespeare’s most modern comedy at the RSC.

“All’s Well that Ends Well, as full of grief and nostalgia as romance and adventure, with its story of sexual politics, class prejudice and generation gaps, would always have felt contemporary. But the fantasy relationships and fake identities in the play make it a perfect match for our anxious, idealistic, lonely, social-media-addicted age.

“I’m thrilled to be working again with designer Robert Innes Hopkins for our second RSC collaboration. We can promise a fleet footed, inventive, contemporary, colourful production, with one foot in real life and one in the online world. I look forward very much to bringing it to audiences, and I hope they will have a thought provoking as well as entertaining evening.'

Gregory’s production of Richard III, playing in repertoire with Blanche’s production of All’s Well That Ends Well, fittingly mark the final productions, in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, of the Company’s ten-year pledge to produce all of Shakespeare’s collected plays for the stage. Screen adaptations of both Richard III and All’s Well That Ends Well will be captured, completing a unique collection of Shakespeare on stage, produced by one Company across one decade.
A new Shakespeare curriculum for all

The RSC has one of the UK’s largest arts learning programmes and believes that all young people should have access to an arts-rich education. Research highlights the uneven playing field with some young people having regular access to proven life defining arts opportunities, whilst others miss out completely.

In 2023 the RSC will launch a new online Shakespeare curriculum. Developed with the RSC Youth Advisory Board, young people, teachers and artists nationally, the curriculum will be available free and online for all UK primary and secondary schools to provide inspiration and resources for teachers and young people to make and shape their own Shakespeare curriculum at Key Stage 3.

The RSC will also expand the Company’s teacher professional development activity using proven performance-based approaches to teaching Shakespeare to support young people’s development, accelerate language acquisition and improve attitudes to learning.

Work on the curriculum begins now and will be developed throughout 2022. The RSC’s ambition is to influence the teaching of Shakespeare in every secondary school in the country once the curriculum launches in 2023.

Jacqui O’ Hanlon, Director of Learning and National Partnerships said: “A new Shakespeare curriculum is needed that enables young people and their teachers to explore, test and challenge the relevance of Shakespeare’s work to our lives and world today.

“Our society needs students who can wrestle with complexity, problem solve, interpret, analyse; who can tell the difference between good arguments and bad; who can see and appreciate different points of view. Exploring Shakespeare’s plays as actors and directors do in the rehearsal room can create these kinds of outcomes for all learners.

“Current curriculum guidance states that students should study two plays by Shakespeare and analyse the language. We know there are so many more powerful learning opportunities with Shakespeare’s work.

“We look forward to collaborating with young people, teachers and artists to create a Shakespeare curriculum for the 21st Century.” Other RSC Learning activity to support young people and teachers includes:

• The return of the RSC’s annual Summer School for lifelong learners, which will run online from Wednesday 24 – Saturday 27 August with an inspiring mix of online and in-person sessions soon to be announced, a week-long
• Playmaking Festival from Monday 11 – Friday 15 July taking place in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and bringing together over 440 young people aged 5 to 18 from the RSC’s national Associate Schools network
• New on demand online conference programme for GCSE English students running from Tuesday 26 – Friday 29 April where schools can sign up to a programme of on demand and live content to support students as they prepare for their GCSE exams.
• Sixth Form Student Conference on Friday 16 September exploring Richard III which will provide unique insights into the production and the interpretive choices made by the company
The Clore Learning Centre in Stratford-upon-Avon will re-open from Tuesday 3 May with a programme of in person workshops and conferences for young people and teachers throughout the summer term and next academic year.
This year also marks the launch of a new Teacher Hub as part of the RSC’s award-winning Shakespeare Learning Zone website: a bespoke resource for students aged 11-18 years visited by over 3 million+ users worldwide annually. The new Teacher Hub is a fully personalised learning space to enable teachers to save content, store their favourite resources and create their own lessons using videos, activities and images from across the learning zone site.
The inside of the Swan Theatre will be stripped back to its wooden frame, and a new structural grid installed to take the weight off the ceiling. At the same time, a new infrastructure for lighting, sound and video streaming will be installed, as well as cleaning and repairing the wood and brickwork. These essential works will increase the technical flexibility of the theatre and help us to make productions more sustainably.