Emma Rice: it was a mistake for Shakespeare's Globe to hire me

Emma Rice, the outgoing artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, has suggested that the theatre’s board disapproved of her because she has a working class background and only two A-levels.

Rice lasted two seasons in the job before announcing her departure. She had clashed with the board over her decision to break with tradition by introducing lighting rigs and amplified sound.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Front Row programme, Rice was asked if the Globe had made a mistake in appointing her.

"Yes," she replied.

But, asked by presenter Samira Ahmed if she would have been given more time to succeed if she was a man, Rice said: “Do you know what? Actually, I think that it’s possibly down to my education - possibly more down to class than gender.

“I got 2 A-levels and I went to a comprehensive in Nottingham.”

Rice said she was “heartbroken for the adventure to be stopped so quickly” and was shocked that the board wanted her out because she judged her first two seasons to have been a critical and popular success.

“But clearly I hadn’t understood something profound about the organisation,” she said. She behaved “like a kid in a playbox” by installing lights and radio microphones. “The Globe is the most exciting venue on the planet… I was electrified by the experience and absolutely I turned up the volume.

“Now I can look back and go, of course that was inflammatory. And I don’t think I had explained that to them, so I completely take responsibility for that.”

Did she discuss her modernisation plans with the board when she interviewed for the job? “No, is the honest answer to that, but neither was I asked,” she said.

Rice said she wished her successor, Michelle Terry, “enormous love and luck for the future”.