CELEBRATING the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, Wales Millennium Centre will be the first venue to display a new touring exhibition from the Victoria and Albert Museum, ‘Shooting Shakespeare; 150 Years of Stage Photography’.

On display from March 29, the unique exhibition will include production photographs from Shakespeare's Globe's Globe to Globe festival alongside images from the V&A's Theatre and Performance Collections.

In 2012, Shakespeare's Globe presented the once-in-a-lifetime Globe to Globe – a festival of 37 Shakespeare plays performed by companies from 37 countries around the world, in their native languages. Photographers Simon Annand, Marc Brenner, John Haynes, Simon Kane and Ellie Kurttz were commissioned to document the plays, resulting in a series of striking photographs.

Shooting Shakespeare unites the Globe to Globe images with a range of photographs from the V&A’s stage photography collection including masterpieces from some of Britain’s most important stage photographers, including Angus McBean, Houston Rogers, Zoë Dominic and Anthony Crickmay.

Louise Miles-Crust, Head of Programming at Wales Millennium Centre said: "I’m thrilled that Wales Millennium Centre will be the first venue on the tour of the Shooting Shakespeare exhibition. It’s wonderful that Welsh audiences will be the first to have an opportunity to view this exciting and high calibre photography collection at the Centre."

Claire Hudson, V&A Curator, said: "We are delighted that ‘Shooting Shakespeare: 150 Years of Stage Photography’ will be launching at the Wales Millennium Centre this spring.

"The V&A Department of Theatre and Performance has over two million photographic images in its collections. This exhibition aims to reflect their wealth and variety."

Spanning 150 years of stage photography, the exhibition highlights the breadth of photographic techniques and styles employed from the birth of photography to the present day, while also examining the art of photography and its relationship with live performance. By juxtaposing historical and contemporary photographs of each play, the exhibition will illuminate the diverse approaches to staging Shakespeare across the decades.

Alongside the photographs are a series of specially commissioned interviews. These short films feature commentary by contemporary photographers Simon Kane, Simon Annand, Ellie Kurttz, John Haynes and Graham Brandon who discuss their process for photographing the stage and their perspective on this specialised field of photography.

Shooting Shakespeare: 150 Years of Stage Photography is a touring exhibition from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, organised in partnership with Shakespeare's Globe. The exhibition will be on display on Glanfa levels 1 and 2 from March 29 – June 8. Entrance to the exhibition is free. For more information visit www.wmc.org.uk