The Animals Come to the Table
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
- Opens: Friday, 11 December 2026 -
Booking until: Sunday, 24 January 2027
The Animals Come to the Table description
The Animals Come to the Table is a new play in which the natural world summons humanity to answer for ecological destruction.
By the candlelight of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, a negotiator and an interpreter are called to a secret emergency meeting. Waiting for them are a chicken, a rat, a snow leopard and an army of voices from the natural world, gathered to demand an end to exploitation and the destruction of the planet. What unfolds imagines the moment the earth finally answers back.
The production is a world premiere and the latest in a lineage of new writing at Shakespeare's Globe, following Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights, Princess Essex, Pinocchio and Deep Azure. It was originally conceived as part of Burnt at the Stake, or the Whole of the Truth in 2023, a project in which playwrights were invited to share new work anonymously.
The play is written by Timberlake Wertenbaker, one of the UK's leading playwrights, whose work is studied and performed around the world. Her previous plays include Our Country's Good, Jefferson's Garden, The Love of the Nightingale and Little Brother. Bringing together politics, wit, philosophy and mischief, the play is an audacious experiment in stepping into someone else's shoes.
Staged in the intimate, candlelit indoor playhouse as part of Shakespeare's Globe's Winter season, it invites audiences to consider humanity's place in the natural world.
Book tickets for The Animals Come to the Table at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and hear the natural world make its case.
