Behind the scenes with the Royal Shakespeare Company

The plays, directed by RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran, focus on the monarchs who reigned over England between 1377 and 1422. Follow the cast and crew through their preparations and rehearsals for performances in Stratford-upon-Avon and on the international tour.

We are fortunate enough to be able to spend six weeks rehearsing a production working alongside the director, voice coach, fight director, musical director and stage management team.

The stage managers constantly monitor rehearsals because decisions in the rehearsal room directly affect the production process. Do we need an extra cushion on the sofa? Which way should a door open? How fast should a scene change? The stage managers record these continuous developments and pass notes to the relevant workshop. They keep a detailed script ('the book' or the 'show bible') with markings of entrances, exits, scene changes and actors' positions that are crucial for the running of the show once it gets on stage.

Background research and visits from expert speakers help to set the context for rehearsals. The cast visited Westminster Abbey to look at the tombs of the kings and nobles they would be portraying, and to get behind the history books to sense the people who really lived.

Henry V is buried in a secret chapel (pictured) which is rarely open to the public. Richard II and Henry V and their wives are buried in the Abbey. Henry IV had a particular respect for Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in 1170, and so chose to be buried at Canterbury Cathedral.

Roy Stephenson, Head of Archaeological Collections and Archive at the Museum of London, shares details of pottery items from the 16th and 17th centuries with the cast and crew.

Sections of the set are often built in the rehearsal room so actors can get a feel for it before they reach the stage. Their first rehearsal on the stage is only four days before the first public performance.

Rehearsal props and costume help actors to build them into their performance from the start. 

When the actors perform in full costume on stage for the first time, it will already feel somewhat familiar to them.

The technical rehearsal in the theatre is when all the special effects are finalised, such as lighting, sound, and set changes.


This is when precise decisions are made about when each effect will take place. These timings become the 'cues' which will be given over the radio by the Deputy Stage Manager to everyone involved in the performance.

The final run of the show is the dress rehearsal, in which every element of the production is practised together, before the first performance in front of an audience.

The audience awaiting the start of the evening’s entertainment and taking the opportunity to read up on what they are about to watch.

The moment of anticipation just before curtain up. In an auditorium such as ours, with a thrust stage where the audience surrounds the actors on three sides, there is no curtain. The start of the show is referred to colloquially as ‘going up’, and instead of raising the curtain, the DSM announces ‘Lights Up on Part One’ for those back of house, as the action gets underway onstage.

At the start of Richard II, the king feels invincible and is confident of his birth right. He is immaculately dressed, rich costume symbolizing his power and authority. During the course of the play, he makes mistakes which bring about his downfall. He loses the support of the nobility, and makes some powerful enemies.

Henry V’s journey begins in the play Henry IV Part I, set during the reign of his father Henry IV. As the Prince of Wales, or Prince Hal, as he is known, he enjoys a relaxed lifestyle and spends his time carousing with Sir John Falstaff in taverns, treating life as a chance to have fun and thinking little about the responsibilities that lie ahead.

In Henry IV Part II, Prince Hal loses his father and the crown of England is conferred upon him. At the end of the play, the newly created Henry V immediately rejects his past life, including his tavern friendship with Falstaff.

At the beginning of the play the character of Chorus asks the audience to help the actors create the epic scenes in the play by using their imagination:

"...can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million; 
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play."
Henry V, Prologue, Act I, Scene 2

In contrast to the bloody action of the battles, we share the French Princess Katherine's amusement as her nurse Alice teaches her some English words. The scene was written to be performed entirely in French.

The wooing of the French princess by Henry, at the end of the play, is a light touch that lends a sense of humanity to the battle worn king.

In our 2007 production of Henry V, the actors playing the French court performed on aerial equipment and trapezes throughout the show, so the rehearsal room required a specialist fit-up.

On the final set, the equipment was colour matched to the costumes and the set. In contrast to the plainly-dressed English soldiers who emerged from below the stage through trapdoors and using ladders, the French occupied the aerial space wearing elaborate brightly-coloured costumes.

We are taking 'King & Country' to London’s Barbican Theatre, to the Shanghai Grand Theatre, Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts and the Hong Kong Arts Festival in China, and to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.

We regularly tour our shows to smaller regional theatres across the UK. We also produce abridged versions for young people and families which tour to schools, such as The Famous Victories of Henry V.

We broadcast most of our Shakespeare shows 'Live from Stratford-upon-Avon' to cinemas around the world and to UK schools. A mobile control room outside the theatre houses the editing and directing team who put the live broadcast together.

Inside the auditorium, rows of seats are removed in preparation for the cameras, and there is a sense of excitement whenever the boom camera swings over the top of the audience in the stalls, heading in for a close up on the action.

For example, Leigh Quinn plays a prince in Henry IV Part 1...

2016 will be a special year for the RSC. Stratford-upon-Avon will be the focus of large scale celebrations of Shakespeare’s legacy, marking 400 years since his death. We hope you can join us here or on tour.