It’s late on a warm afternoon and there is no performance on, yet it is clear that the play’s the thing. The foyer at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is packed with hundreds of children. They do not bear the usual look of 11 to 14-year-olds participating sullenly in an educational day out, or, indeed, of whining schoolboys creeping like snails unwillingly to school.

After a day of studying the Bard, the atmosphere is noisy and buzzing with excitement.

“We get 100,000 students a year, aged from 3 to postgraduates,” says Patrick Spottiswoode, the Globe’s education director, “and at our busiest, we have 800 in a day. Children often arrive bored and cynical, but once they’ve been introduced to Shakespeare, they become animated and positive.” His PA, Adrienne Gillam, sees it for herself: “It’s wonderful to watch an audience of kids come alive,” she says.

The education programme is run by 23 members of staff with the help of 60 freelancers, usually actors who have been specially trained in each year group’s syllabus and can help students of all ages to create a production in less than a day.

The events have come a long way since 1984 when Patrick arrived — by coincidence, on Shakespeare’s birthday. He recalls: “I was working on a PhD and decided to take a year off, but 24 years later, I’m still here. There were only two members of staff, and the job advertisement was for someone to run an arts centre, museum and café. In reality, I started the arts centre with £200 of my own books, the museum was in a leaking warehouse and the café consisted of a kettle.”

The original Globe burnt down in 1613 and was eventually rebuilt, only to be pulled down two years later, in 1642, to make way for tenements. By 1984, its third incarnation, replicating the original, was no more than one man’s dream: “Sam Wanamaker wanted this for a very long time, with a trust being formed in 1970. So, by the time I met him, he had already been at it for 14 years, battling enormous cynicism. He was an amazing man,” says Patrick. “It was very sad that neither he nor the architect, Theo Crosby, lived long enough to see the Globe finally reopen in 1997.

“Sam once said to me that Shakespeare belongs to Southwark, to the nation and to the world, and that is my guiding principle. We do international conferences, welcome students from many countries, travel all over the UK, but work locally — we’ve just been commissioned by the Metropolitan Police to work with youth in Lambeth, drawing on Shakespeare to develop children.

“I’m very much the ideas man and Adrienne makes them happen. For instance, we’ve done Shakespeare and the law, Shakespeare and medicine, and even Shakespeare and shoes, leading up to the opening of the ‘wobbly’ bridge over the Thames next to us.

“Adrienne works for me part-time, and it’s chaos when she’s not here. The moment she walks in, calm is restored.”

Adrienne says: “Patrick is an appreciative person to work with and the whole department is terrific: everyone is so passionate and creative. My job is to make sure that all the ideas they have become balloons that take to the air and reach their destinations.

“There’s constant reciprocity between us and the theatre itself, and when it closes between October and April we take over the stage, meaning that every child during that time gets to step on to it and speak a few lines.”

Adrienne, who is American by birth, has worked at the Globe for just over three years. Her unusual CV includes PA work, freelance travel writing, helping her husband to run a property business and working for a literary agency.

“One reason why I love it at the Globe so much is that I feel so involved with something so good at what it does,” she says.

Indeed, so successful is Globe Education that in the autumn it will be launching a £20 million appeal to build a new education centre that will include a second theatre, converting the old warehouse where Patrick started.

“We hope to begin the new building in 2010,” says Patrick. “I think Sam would have been very proud.”

www.shakespeares-globe.org

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