I agree wholeheartedly about the Globe, Jacqui. The atmosphere there is like nowhere else. I love the closeness of the audience to the action and to each other. Best of all is being a 'groundling'. The best value 5 pounds you can spend in London. I love their "original practices" productions, where they take away the back panels and you see the actors getting ready before the panels are put back on before the start of the play.

I got tantalizingly close to one of *my* Shakespearean ambitions earlier this year. I was due to do a day of speech training there with the Globe's 'Master of Voice' Stewart Pearce, learning about the vocal techniques he teaches the casts for projection in that unique auditorium, which would have meant standing and speaking on that wonderful stage - but the day was cancelled at the last minute because there weren't going to be enough participants. Keeping fingers crossed that the opportunity will come up again.

I'm still working on seeing all the plays. Some of them are so rarely performed. Where did you manage to see Henry VI, Richard II and King John, Cool Beans ?

I doubt I'll ever perform in anything like all of Shakespeare's plays, but I'm working on that, too. I'm going to be in my fifth one (The Merchant of Venice) in April, and am directing 11 year-olds in the Shakespeare4Kidz version of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' for July. We've just started looking at the script and songs, and they love it - especially the Mechanicals.

The 'Reduced Shakespeare Company' show, where you DO see all the plays (sort-of !) is coming off, sadly, next month - the longest-running comedy in the West End. I did manage to achieve an ambition there: appearing on a West End stage. I was picked from the audience to go up and be screaming Ophelia when they do their 'Freudian Hamlet' sequence. (Anyone who has seen the show will know the bit I mean). That was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life. Oh, how I would love to repeat it ! Our seats were right in the front row and when we arrived in the theatre and walked across the front to get to them, I looked out into the auditorium and imagined what it would be like to be looking out from stage height and how great that would be. The gods were certainly smiling, because that is exactly what was to happen. I was going to post this story on the 'lifetime's ambitions' thread a couple of days ago, but everyone else was talking about close encounters with badgers and the like, and my story would have been out of place. So I'm glad to have the chance to tell it here. I can still feel that thrill of being on stage in such a place, with a full audience and under the spotlight, screaming away. (I 'gave it my all' and screamed so long and so loudly, they had to alter their script !)

I have also stood on the stage at the theatre in Stratford-on-Avon - but minus an audience that time - a thrill to be there and to see backstage, but the Reduced Shakespeare experience was undoubtedly the best !

- jeanie