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Venice, 1574: two charlatans and mountebanks are asked to stage Romeo and Juliet in honour of Henry III Valois who is visiting the city. In a couple of hours, they have to find the right Juliet; a chaste and beautiful maid is needed. They pick out a provocative courtesan, Veronica. The show we attend is an open rehearsal, rich in improvisation acts in the style of "commedia dell'arte."
Read MoreFounded in 1921 by Don Gaetano Napoli, Marionettistica Fratelli Napoli is a family run company specialised in the traditional Sicilian puppet theatre called Opera dei Pupi. The creative cast is almost exclusively made up by family members and they also cover all the roles of performances.
The Fratelli Napoli’s adaptation of Richard III is the distinctive result of the traditional Opera dei Pupi, the Sicilian Puppet Theatre. Therefore, all characters act according to that tradition. For instance, Richard III’s interpretation is heavily influenced by that of Gano di Magonza, the stock character which is the villain par excellence in the epic poem The Song of Roland, the favourite and most represented adaptation of the Opera dei Pupi.
Read MoreThis show was designed as a site-specific staging of Macbeth, in the wardrobe of Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza. In this space the directors wanted to recreate the crudeness of the contemporary world in juxtaposition with the rich beauty of the Basilica itself. Their version of Macbeth, as they remark, stresses "the radicalism of evil of the human soul, which leads to deceit and folly, in a constant contrast between the supernatural and the deviant interpretation of reality."
Read MoreW.S. Tempest is the third episode of a Shakespearean 'trilogy of water' that Teatro del Lemming has worked on in the last few years. During the performance, the whole Shakespearean corpus is evoked, as if its characters were small fragments of ourselves. W.S. Tempest is the telling of a shipwreck which initially occurs in the mind of Prospero/Shakespeare who, from the sea depths, evokes its characters as if in rapture.
Read MoreThe Lovers is inspired by the stories of well known Shakespearean couples. It is a site-specific performance investigating the tortuous tensions which give spaces, relationships and events an erotic dimension and which become unexpected ground for love. A poetic, raw and sometimes grotesque exploration inside the human being, where sensuality can be grafted in the darkest passions, in the most difficult conditions or in the playful taste of pleasure.
Read MoreThe two directors, who also adapted the text, believe that their production presents the figure of a new man. Macbeth is an antihero who brings within him fairness and unfairness, a sort of Copernicus who in between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth century challenges the status quo. He oscillates between the symbolic inheritance and the new relativism which leads to modernity.
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Romeo and Juliet, the Romantic tragedy par excellence, becomes a middle-class tragedy about generational clashes in Andrea Baracco’s vision. The tearing conflicts which run through the whole story show us an adult world shut in its own unmoving universe—its houses are like shop windows. The adults are just interested in keeping their own privileges and remain impassive to the uneasiness and the violent passions which overcome their sons and daughters. Baracco's reading of this classic tries to tell us about our contemporary world, hanging in the balance between fidelity to the original and his own interpretation of it characterized by a stylized theatrical language.
Read MoreIt is the third time Luk Perceval directs Macbeth and every time he chooses a different way of reading and adapting Shakespeare's 'black play'. This production in particular explores the intimate relation between Macbeth and his Lady, the Man and the Woman.
Read MoreThe playtext used for the show is based on the 1597 First Quarto (Q1) of Romeo and Juliet, translated and staged integrally for the first time in Italy. Teatrino del Giullare stages Romeo and Juliet as a comic tragedy made of contrasts and illusions, a tale built on reflections, anxieties and desires created with the help of masks which the the two performers characteristically employ in every creation they stage.
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Director Luca De Fusco worked on the text in order to highlight the weird elements present within it. In his opinion, the fundamental moments in the play are all pervaded by an oneiric, dreamlike atmosphere which goes as far as the unreal. At the centre of the scene he puts the Macbeths' bedroom, because he believes that more than a play about war and dead it is a play about a philosophical, theological and psychiatric struggle.
Read MoreGiulio Cesare – Pezzi staccati (Julius Caesar – Spared Parts) is a show inspired by Shakespeare’s tragedy. Romeo Castellucci brings back to the theatre a shortened version of his ground-breaking 1997 production of Julius Caesar in a new version made up of ‘fragments’ that evoke the original.
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 MoreThe Lear Episode is part of a cycle entitled In the Night’s Heart, a project that draws upon Shakespearean plays. It takes place open air, in a structure enveloped in huge transparent plastic curtains. It was composed of twelve sections taken from Shakespeare's King Lear.
Read MoreA fresh and vibrant community production of Romeo and Juliet, involving local amateurs, young performers, and a few British actors. This promenade performance starts in the foyer of the theatre and then moves through various spaces in the city: inhabiting public parks, the main city square, narrow streets or large avenues as it was the case with Juliet’s funeral procession which impeded the regular streaming of traffic amid cry and tears of the performers grieving Juliet’s death. A rare example of theatre irrupting city life.
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The company of young interpreters is made up of students from the Theatre Department of the "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu. The play was first staged in 2011 and when it was presented at the International Theatre Festival " Riverside Left" in 2015 in Moscow, it was awarded the Special Jury Award for best modern interpretation.
The show is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest for a young audience and it features actors and puppets. It took place open air and attracted a mixed audience of children and grown-ups.
Read MoreDirector Margarita Mladenova, co-founder of Sfumato, decided to stage her version of The Winter’s Tale in a snow-white setting; scenes and costumes are therefore signs of the ice cold life after humans lose love. As she stated, The Winter's Tale "is about a human who is lost and destroys his own life and the life of his closest kin." The sets suggest the characters are being treated in a sort of hospital's ward or, worse, they are already in a mortuary room.
Read MorePeter Schneider has worked with a group of young talented Romanian artists to create a provocative and contemporary visual language that moves fluidly between reality and unexpected, surprising and shocking images.
Read MoreThis highly theatrical production features a large cast of performers from the two companies of the Saitama Theatre. It therefore mixes young interpreters (Saitama Next) with elderly ones (Saitama Gold), who symbolically move on wheelchairs so as to highlight a feeling of the passing of time and of a physical and moral decaying.
Under the direction and supervision of its Artistic Director (the late Yukio Ninagawa), the “Sai-no-kuni Shakespeare Series” has put on such popular works as Hamlet and Macbeth as well as plays rarely staged in Japan, such as Antony and Cleopatra and the epic trilogy Henry VI. Also popular is the “All Male Series,” which stages plays as they were originally performed, with an all-male cast. Starting with our co-production of King Lear with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the series has been successfully staged overseas such as in Stratford-upon-Avon, London, New York, and Seoul. Now it represents one of the most pioneering Shakespeare productions in Asia, and keeps receiving global attention.
Richard II is the last Shakespeare's play Ninagawa directed, since he passed away aged 80 at the beginning of May 2016.
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The adaptation is created for twelve dancers and a quintet of musicians. Theshow is inspired by the well known Shakespearean tragedy. Contemporary dance and tango interact to give birth to an increasingly compelling show, featuring fantastic dancers and “argentinian tangueros.”
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This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
