the Bard

The President of Gdańsk Paweł Adamowicz is in London to promote the idea of reconstructing a Shakespearean theatre in the Baltic city.

Adamowicz, accompanied by Chairman of the Theatrum Gedenense Foundation Jerzy Limon, have been invited by the Prince of Wales to his private residence at Clarence House for dinner.

Prince Charles, who is the honorary patron of the project in Poland, has already had several meetings with its initiators in recent years.

While in London, the President of Gdansk and Jerzy Limon, the driving force behind the project, are also to visit the Globe Theatre, which is a replica of an Elizabethan theatre closely associated with Shakespeare.

The Gdansk – Shakespeare goes back four centuries. In the 17th century, Gdansk was an important merchant centre and had quite a large community of British living there. Historical documents speak of more than 25 visits to Gdansk by English actors.   

It was in the early 1990s that Jerzy Limon, a theatre historian and scholar, discovered traces of a Shakespearean playhouse in Gdańsk which resembled the Fortune Playhouse in Elizabethan London, a frequent haunt of Shakespeare’s.  He soon came up with the idea of reconstructing the theatre and founded the Theatrum Gedanense Foundation which supervises the project.

The cornerstone for the theatre was laid in September 2009. The design is by the Italian architect Renato Rizzi.

The reconstruction of the Shakespearean Theatre in Gdansk, due to be completed in 2013 has won the support of the European Union, which covers around sixty percent of the cost. (mk)