LONDON (AP) - Shakespeare's Globe - London's open-air, Elizabethan-style playhouse - announced Monday that Olivier Award-winning actress Michelle Terry will be its new artistic director.
Terry will take up the post in April 2018. She replaces Emma Rice, who is leaving early after claiming a lack of support from the company's board.
Terry has a long association with the Globe, where her roles have included Rosalind in "As You Like It" and Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." She has also performed for Britain's National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and played the lead in "Henry V" at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.
Terry said she was looking forward to helping artists and audiences "reclaim and rediscover" the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as well as new writers.
Opened in 1997 on the south bank of the River Thames, the Globe has an open-air theater modeled on an Elizabethan playhouse that once stood nearby, and a candle-lit indoor auditorium based on 17th-century designs.
Terry's appointment came as a surprise, since she has little directing experience. But she is not the first actor to head the Globe. Academy Award-winner Mark Rylance led the company for a decade.