I am really proud of our relationship with Newcastle and the North East and we are certainly not abandoning the city, as Ms Anne Thrope suggests (“Codpieces exit, stage right”, TES Magazine, 4 March).

We are very disappointed we can’t bring a full season of plays to the city this autumn because of pressures on our funding and the demands of the move back into our transformed Stratford home. But we are planning both a Young People’s Shakespeare tour this autumn and a national tour early in 2012, both of which will include Newcastle. We’ve also applied to the Arts Council for funding to support a full return from 2012.

We would love to welcome Ms Thrope’s class to Macbeth. I’m sorry she seems to have been misinformed by our box office. We don’t ask school groups to make voluntary donations, and we do have subsidised ticket prices from Mondays to Thursdays.

Michael Boyd, Artistic director, Royal Shakespeare Company.