By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 19, 2007

Part of the ongoing Shakespeare in Washington festival, the National Building Museum's new exhibition on the history and legacy of the Globe theater contains several renderings of the Elizabethan building used by the Bard and his acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men. (Built in 1599, the Globe burned down in 1613, was rebuilt the following year and permanently demolished during the rise of Puritanism in 1644.)

What's interesting about this is that nobody knows what the place really looked like. "Nothing is definitive," exhibition curator Martin Moeller says of the many attempts to depict or re-create the performance space, including such meticulous reconstructions as Shakespeare's Globe, a credible, if not exact, replica completed in 1997 near the site of the original in London.

Well, not "nothing" exactly.

We do know more than a little bit about the Globe, such as the fact that the cheap seats -- where the so-called groundlings could stand and watch the show for a penny -- were open to the sky and elements. Members of the audience were boisterous -- sometimes sitting on the edge of the thrust stage, which protruded into the middle of the crowd -- and, as likely as not, drunk.

The performance space was furnished with a roof (called "the heavens") supported by two columns, with some kind of fly house structure up top (so an actor could be lowered on ropes) and changing rooms for the actors in back. For the audience, or at least those who paid extra, three tiers of covered galleries surrounded the stage like an arena. When sold out, the Globe could accommodate 3,000 people.

Other than that, Moeller's right: We don't know much. Still, it's fun to speculate, as many have done. Was the Globe round? Oval? Did it have eight sides or, as more recent research has suggested, 16 to 24?

The exhibition raises other issues as well, such as questions of authenticity and the absurdly purist idea that Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare unless his plays are experienced as his contemporaries experienced them. "Reinventing the Globe" explores theater designs that have attempted to re-create the look of the Elizabethan stage, such as Washington's Elizabethan Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library, completed in 1932. The problem, of course, with places like that is that they sometimes aren't necessarily the easiest to act in, or design for, as any theater professional will tell you.

Another section of the exhibition examines stages built since the mid-20th century that try to capture the essence of what the show calls "Globeness" -- the old theater's intimacy, for instance -- without slavishly imitating its structure. One particularly fun (if ultimately silly) entry is the so-called Ice Globe, an open-air theater made entirely of ice erected in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden, in 2003 as a tourist attraction.

Elsewhere, you'll find examples of such state-of-the-art halls as the homegrown Sidney Harman Hall, a flexible, 800-seat performance space slated to open in downtown Washington in the fall that will supplement the Shakespeare Theatre Company's 450-seat Lansburgh Theatre. In accordance with the wishes of company artistic director Michael Kahn, that space, designed by Diamond and Schmitt Architects, makes no effort to evoke the Globe.

Perhaps the most thought-provoking (and frustrating) part of the exhibition, however, is the section devoted to five hypothetical theaters "for the 21st century" created by designers commissioned by the museum to reinterpret the Globe's notion of openness and intimacy. Of these, two presentations seem especially bizarre, not to mention counter to the point of live theater.

Incorporating a series of high-definition Internet2 screens that could connect actors performing in locations around the world, John Coyne's New Global Theatre is actually not a terrible idea. Kahn himself has broached the idea of staging the Roman and Egyptian scenes of "Antony and Cleopatra," for instance, using actors in separate locations connected via technology. But while such a scenario -- or the ghost scenes in "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" -- might work, it seems strange to imagine watching a live Macbeth acting opposite a virtual Lady Macbeth, one who appears via something like a JumboTron. Aside from turning the idea of "stage presence" on its head, Coyne's plan subverts the quintessential energy actors get from one another when they're in the same room.

Similarly, the open, arena-like scaffolding of the Rockwell Group's Transparent Theater, which would require electronic amplification to counteract its obvious acoustic deficiencies, seems better suited to a heavy-metal concert than Shakespeare, the poetry of whose language is paramount.

More practical, and probably most in keeping with the spirit of the original Globe, is the Office of Mobile Design's GlobeTrotter, a 12-by-14-by-50-foot trailer that converts any flat site it can be towed to into a stage approximately the size of the one at the Globe.

While problematic, these speculative designs are worth thinking about, and the Building Museum has done well to bring them to us, if for no other reason than they do what Shakespeare's plays -- and the Globe -- were created for. They open our eyes and our imaginations to new worlds and startling possibilities.

REINVENTING THE GLOBE: A SHAKESPEAREAN THEATER FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Through Aug. 27 at the National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW (Metro: Judiciary Square). 202-272-2448. http://www.nbm.org/. Open Monday-Saturday 10 to 5; Sundays 11 to 5. Free.

Public programs associated with the exhibition include:

Feb. 6 from 6:30 to 8 "All the World's a Stage: The Performance of Space." Curator Martin Moeller moderates a discussion with Barbara Romer, founder of the New Globe Theater, and theater consultant and set designer John Coyne, who envisioned the New Global Theatre. $20; members and students $12. Prepaid registration required.

May 12 from 1 to 4 Shakespeare Family Day With the Folger Shakespeare Library. Free.

June (date and time to be determined) "Spotlight on Design." David Rockwell, founding principal of the Rockwell Group, discusses his design studio's work. $20; members $12; students $10. Prepaid registration required.