Girls and boys : The Royal Shakespeare Company's 2014 summer season

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has been at the forefront of the production of plays by Shakespeare (and his contemporaries) since its establishment in 1961. However, the mid-decade years of the 2010s have in many ways found the RSC at the beginning of a new era in what may be considered a period of change for the broader theatre industry in the UK and, as Susannah Clapp has observed “the company is no longer alone with Shakespeare”. Although the company has had success with seasons of plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries, the announcement of the “Roaring Girls” season in 2014 – Elizabethan and Jacobean plays featuring female protagonists and directed by women – marked a departure for non-Shakespeare and women at the RSC. This short article offers some of the context for the season and thus introduces the responses found in this special issue.