Thank you for visiting our archive. Each performance submitted to our website will be explained in detail in its own blog post. You can choose to look through these posts in a variety of ways.
Tickets for Deborah Warner's Salzburg Festival German-language production of The Tempest included a shuttle bus from the city centre to an island (Perner-Insel, Hallein) where Shakespeare's late play about power and isolation was performed.
Read MoreSince 1991 a recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre has stood on the racecourse in Neuss, Germany. Each year it hosts a summer festival and the 2016 edition showcased productions from companies across Europe including several premieres, a puppet Tempest, and a one-woman Henry VIII. The festival also included a classical Shakespeare concert, a lecture by Patrick Spottiswoode of the London Globe, and a series of events exploring the idea of ‘Shakespeare and beyond’ which included a stage version of Woody Allen’s 1982 film A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy and an adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s Maria Stuart. The majority of productions were presented in German; German surtitles were available for those presented in English or French.
Read MoreOphelias Zimmer was a feminist alternative narrative that approached Hamlet from the point of view of the Dane's doomed lover, Ophelia. The action (or lack thereof) all took place in Ophelia's claustrophobic room where repetition enforced the play's reading of the character as a victim ensnared, silenced and aestheticised by Elsinore's patriarchy.
Read MoreThomas Ostermeier’s Richard III, interpreted by Lars Eidinger in an outstanding performance, has a direct relationship to his audience throughout the play and seems to ask them, in the director words, just that: “Have you ever wanted to do what Richard does? Have you never felt the desire to commit wrongful acts?”
Read More“Italian opera’s greatest tragedy, Otello is a miraculous union of music and drama, a masterpiece as profound philosophically as it is thrilling theatrically. Shakespeare’s tale of an outsider, a great hero who can’t control his jealousy, was carefully molded by the librettist Arrigo Boito into a taut and powerful opera text. Otello almost wasn’t written: following the success of Aida and his setting of the Requiem mass in the early 1870s, Verdi considered himself retired, and it took Boito and publisher Giulio Ricordi several years to persuade him to take on a major new work.”
--description from the Metropolitan Opera website
“A multilingual reading of Hamlet– the most frequently performed and translated play in the world — by the students, faculty, alumni, and supporters of the University of Ottawa.”
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The Folkwang Shakespeare Festival is an annual event hosted by the Folkwang University of the Arts, Germany. Every year the university invites three other institutions to join them in co-producing a given play. The director/student teams from each university craft their own productions independently, and in their native languages. After performing these at the festival, the teams then band together to craft and perform a collaborative production of the play (in English).
Read More“Shakespeare represents the Danish royal court as a corrupt political system which becomes a paranoid maze for Hamlet. Murder, betrayal, manipulation and sexuality are the weapons used in the war to preserve power. Not able to take on and fight the cynical rules of the game at the court, Hamlet stagnates and turns his aggressions against himself. His gift of distinguishing pros and cons becomes an insurmountable hindrance in accomplishing his goals, and as the last person with scruples in a system without any, he is finally doomed. With its central paradox of the incapacitated protagonist, Hamlet remains today a valid analysis of the intellectual dilemma between complex thinking and political action. Shakespeare serves up over twenty characters, allowing a political biosphere to arise out of differing interests and intrigue. In Ostermeier’s production, just six actors will play all these characters, constantly changing roles. Hamlet’s progressive loss of touch with reality, his disorientation, the manipulation of reality and identity are mirrored in the acting style, which takes pretense and disguise as its basic principle.”—From Schaubühne’s website
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This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
