Shakespeare and Windrush

Robin Belfield, Tinuke Craig and Dr Wendy Lennon are coming together for a conversation on the links between Shakespeare and the Windrush Generation at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on Thursday 22 October. It's part of the Shakespeare and Race Festival, which has been running since 2018 as a way of opening up conversations about race in Shakespeare's plays and in his era through workshops, conversations, symposia and performances. The festival describes its participants — artists, scholars, students and professionals — as its beating heart, reimagining what Shakespeare can do today.

The discussion draws a line from the HMT Empire Windrush, which brought the British Caribbean community to Britain in 1948, to the enduring legacies of Caribbean migration and British identity, and on to the community's contributions to literature, theatre and the study of Shakespeare. It's a broad arc to cover in one sitting, and the three speakers come at it from different angles: Belfield and Craig from the stage, and Lennon from the academic side.

The evening is held in the candle-lit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the Globe's indoor studio, and it runs alongside the company's wider 2026-27 winter season. The Globe is also marking 30 years of ground-breaking research, so the festival sits within a larger stretch of work on the playwright's relationship to race and identity. The conversation starts at 7.00 PM and runs for an hour and a half, with tickets costing £5.00.