'Raising the Curtain on London's First Theatreland - Excavations at The Stage, Shoreditch'

The Curtain playhouse was built c 1577 and is one of the very earliest purpose built theatrical venues and operated as a place of public entertainment until the mid 1620s. During that time it staged many productions including William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour. Of the handful of Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouses that were built in London, the Curtain in Shoreditch is one of the least documented and until the site was excavated in 2016 very little was known about it. Heather will be talking about the archaeology found on the site, looking at the range of questions that this is raising, the new narratives that the archaeology is proposing, and how archaeology is contributing to an interdisciplinary dialogue researching the origins and evolution of 16th century drama.