Theater

- The Old Globe Theatre has found that new plays beget new plays. The Globe’s summer season, announced this week, is heavy with new works by the likes of Neil Simon, A.R. Gurney Jr. and Stephen Metcalfe, a sign of new maturity, said the Globe’s managing director, Tom Hall.

“It’s an evolutionary process for us,” Hall said. “Four or five years ago, we didn’t produce a lot of new work. The fact is we didn’t come to people’s minds as a theater that supports new playwrights. I don’t think the best quality of new work was necessarily available to us. We had not established a track record.”

Producing original plays is a different process, Hall said. “As we became more facile, these opportunities came to us and word got out. Now, we can get the cream of the crop. To couple (top contemporary playwrights’) work with Shakespeare is a great opportunity. It’s been a long-term goal to combine the best of the classics and the best of modern works.”