Être ou ne pas être, all the world's a stage for Bard in 38 languages

The Globe Theatre is to stage Shakespeare's 38 plays in 38 languages, including Turkish, Arabic and Lithuanian.

In a six-week spell before the 2012 Olympics, theatre chiefs announced today, King Lear will be performed in the Aboriginal languages of Australia and Pakistani TV star Nadia Jamil will play Katherine in an Urdu version of The Taming of the Shrew.

Other highlights will include a Maori production of Troilus and Cressida as well as Two Gentlemen of Verona presented in Zimbabwe's Shona tongue.

Dominic Dromgoole, the theatre's artistic director, said he wanted to create an "international Shakespeare community in the heart of London".

He said: "Shakespeare has become an international language and has proved one of the most life-affirming and barrier-transcending ways that people can speak to one another.

"His plays have been translated into every major living language and there is a long tradition of Shakespeare performances around the world in people's own vernacular."

The performances will start on April 23, Shakespeare's birthday, at the culmination of the four-year London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

The Globe has also announced plans to complete the re-creation of Shakespeare's own Blackfriars theatre at its home on the South Bank as part of an £8 million project.

A shell of the theatre was built prior to the Globe's completion in 1997 and officials are appealing for donations to fund construction work from November 2012, so the new venue can be launched a year later.

The indoor theatre will seat about 320 people with an authentic pit area, based on plans found in the Sixties.

Mr Dromgoole said: "The faithful re-creation of the Globe 14 years ago revolutionised people's ideas of what a theatre can, could and should be.

"The re-creation of a Jacobean theatre, the closest simulacrum of Shakespeare's own Blackfriars we can achieve, will prove a revelation of equal magnitude."