Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole said a production of Cymbeline performed in the local Juba Arabic tongue would be the first time South Sudan has participated in an international cultural event, and a major achievement for the new country. "The size of their desire to come here was simply overwhelming," he said.
The festival, part of the cultural warmup for summer's London Olympic Games, reflects the ability of Britain's most famous playwright to reach audiences in many languages and cultures.
It launches April 23, Shakespeare's birthday, with Troilus and Cressida in Maori, performed by New Zealand's Ngakau Toa company, and includes what Dromgoole called a "lurid, tawdry, drugs-and-strippers" version of Macbeth from Poland.
Also on the program are Twelfth Night in Hindi, Pericles in Greek, and The Merry Wives of Windsor in Swahili, as well as productions by both Israelis and Palestinians: Tel Aviv's Habima company performs The Merchant of Venice - a play often accused of anti-Semitism - while Ramallah-based Ashtar Theater stages Richard II.
Henry VI, a three-part history of war and national identity, is being reinvented as a "Balkan trilogy" by the national theaters of Serbia, Albania, and Macedonia.
Participants range from such large and well-established companies as the National Theater of China (performing Richard III, a study of coercion and dictatorship) to semi-underground troupes like the Belarus Free Theater, which has been harassed by the former Soviet state's autocratic regime. It will do Shakespeare's study of a dictator in decline, King Lear.
Afghanistan's Roy-e-Sabs will perform for the first time outside Kabul with a production of A Comedy of Errors in Dari. Until recently the troupe rehearsed in the British Council compound in Kabul, which was attacked by suicide bombers last month, sparking an eight-hour battle that killed eight people.
Three productions come from the English-speaking world: The Globe's own production of Henry V and a hip-hop-flavored Othello from Chicago's Q Brothers, and London's Deafinitely Theatre performing Love's Labor's Lost in British Sign Language.
The festival will be a complex logistical exercise, but, said producer Tom Bird, the ground rules for participants were simple - don't bring a set, rely on costumes and movement, and "revel in the music of your own language."
The Globe is a re-creation of the open-air theater where some of Shakespeare's plays were first performed. Many patrons stand in the open air as "groundlings," like their Elizabethan predecessors.
The festival offers several Olympic-themed ticket plans, from a two-play "biathlon" to a "marathon" of 26 plays. If willing to stand, the adventurous and energetic can see all 37 plays for 100 pounds ($160).
