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.
Fake Escape's Venus and Adonis combined physical theatre, classical delivery and original music both live and recorded. Performed by an all-male company, the production (the first major stage adaptation of Shakespeare's narrative poem for over a decade) explored 21st century themes of gender fluidity and social conditioning. It was presented in association with We Are Proud as part of Bristol Pride and Bristol Shakespeare Festival.
Read MoreWlm Shxpr is an original production by the EDG and Knights of the Light Entertainment. The audience is led in three groups by three performers of the sonnets in a promenade experience of Shakespeare's most famous scenes. All three narrators explain their view on the bard who remains absent. The production encompasses original writing by Daniel Morgenroth and a dozen original songs based on the sonnets by the EDG's music team.
Read MoreAfter several unique shows based on Shakespeare’s plays, 123 Schtunk now makes a production about the man himself. Who was the man who wrote those fascinating plays? Where was he from? Where did he go? Many questions, few answers. 123Schtunk presents the absolute truth about Shakespeare, his theatre and his London.
Read MoreSeparated from her twin brother Sebastian after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the Duke of Illyria. Wooing Olivia on his behalf, she is stunned to find herself the object of Olivia's affections. With the arrival of her brother, and a trick played on Olivia's steward, confusion reigns supreme in this classic romantic comedy of mistaken identity, songs, dances and multiple marriages. Twelfth Night is considered Shakespeare's most lyrical as well as experimental play. Piya Behrupiya transposes the action from Illyria to India in the form of a Nautanki and makes Shakespeare's gloriously sunny comedy come alive.
Read MoreWitches curse an actress to play the role of Lady Macbeth over and over again until she gets it just right. Will she be able to conquer madness, Serbians, and enchanted bagpipers long enough to triumph as Shakespeare's most misunderstood heroine?
Read More“An adaptation of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. The show comes out of a box: props, costume and instruments. The show utilizes comedy, tragedy, hats and songs to tell one of Shakespeare's least known plays.” (description from the Fringe Programme)
Read More“An improvised Shakespeare play inspired by audience suggestions. Bursting with comedy, love, tragedy, mistaken identity and everything in between, to delight Shakespeare nerds and newbies alike.” --description from Fringe Programme
Read MoreKing Lear is a play about the disintegration of a world where blindness is sight and madness is wisdom. A play that conveys to us explosive revelations on love, power and (individual and social) justice. At the start, Lear believes that power is limitless, and so divides it among his three daughters. But he ends up discovering that suffering is the only thing that is truly limitless, something that deeply strikes nearly all of us, for the pains of the conflict between parents and children are inevitably universal. It is said, and rightly so, that in King Lear certain human wrecks manage to recover their humanity. But that recovery does not imply redemption, it just means that they refuse to accept suffering, torture and death. When Lear enters, bearing Cordelia dead in his arms, someone noticed that even Shakespeare seems to fall silent before this death, and the babblings of a mad old man will have to do as the eulogy of his “loved” yet “forsaken” daughter.
Actor Jorge Pinto is Lear, after having played Claudius in 2002 staging of Hamlet by Ricardo Pais. In the year of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Ensemble Company returns to an author who writes of a time “when madmen lead the blind,” now in the company of stage director Rogério de Carvalho, another wise and restless master.
Read MoreAs part of the official programme commemorating the 400th year anniversary of the deaths of Tang Xianzu and William Shakespeare, Performance Infinity helped the ‘The Malachites’ break new ground by taking responsibility for their first international tour of China.
Founded in 2013 ‘The Malachites’ are a site-specific theatre company who aim to reconnect Shakespeare and his plays to the areas in which he lived and worked, as well as bringing their own unique style to an international audience.
This year saw the Malachites take Hamlet, perhaps Shakespeare’s most revered play, to the Guangzhou Dramatic Arts Centre, China. Having previously played in venues ranging from historic gardens to Churches, this was an event not to be missed. In conjunction with Performance Infinity, ‘The Malachites’ production received critical acclaim, performing to a sold out Chinese audience.
Read MorePericles is a comedy with elements of thriller and adventure, a fairy tale equally relating to children and to adults. When Pericles brings salvation (in form of corn sacks) to Tarsus, there starts a Neapolitan song and dance, with the actors basking in flour and making pastry, resulting in pizza that they actually share with the audience. Gower, the narrator, tells us what will follow and summarises what preceded in witty rhymes and interacts with the actors, sometimes choosing a wrong one for the given role. Like a comedy of humours, with the Tarsus royal couple elegantly mocked and Helicanus, the sage of Tyre, resting on the laurels of his old reputation, senile and pessimistic as ever, not having anything smart to say and actually do his job (advise Pericles). When Thaissa rises from the dead, in Diana’s temple, everybody faints with amazement and then they are impatient to stand up, waiting for Gower’s endless speech to finish and finally kicking him off of the stage. Marina is the torch of the whole play, bright and quick, clever and outspoken, not meek and tender like a typical Shakespearean heroine.
Read MoreLady Shakespeare examines Elizabeth I as Shakespeare’s alter-ego. “In this play, I defend the idea that Elizabeth I was the author of many Shakespeare’s plays”, explains Lois Blanco, citing the basis of the play he has written and directed for the 2016 Fringe, in the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. This solo show is performed by Paula Blanco, a Spanish actress embodying seven different characters: four of Shakespeare’s central female characters, William Shakespeare himself and reigning monarch Elizabeth I.” --description from company website
Read MoreA performance of Hans Werner Henze's Royal Winter Music, songs inspired by Shakespeare's works. Guitar performance by Stefan Koim, interspersed with dramatic readings of excerpts of the plays. The performance was part of a public lecture cycle (Shakespeare400) which was designed to celebrate Shakespeare and inspire a wide audience.
Read MoreGB Theatre offered classic, open-air family fun at the Bristol Shakespeare Festival with their take on As You Like It, which played in repertory with Romeo and Juliet.
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 MoreThis production relocated King Lear from ancient Britain to the Northern Territory, Australia, thus establishing a thought-provoking link between Lear's disastrous division of his kingdom and land ownership and social reform in Australia, following the first Land Rights Act of 1976. The concern with land was powerfully conveyed by the red sand that covered the vast expanses of the stage of the Barbican theatre. The gigantic road train that towered over the stage was a painful reminder of the environmental and social ravages caused by intensive mining in the region. The exploitation of the land goes against the Aboriginal belief that we do not own the land, but that the land owns us. Another exciting aspect of this production was the blending of Shakespeare's lines with Kriol and other Aboriginal languages which, along with live singing and live music on stage, evoked the soundscape of the Northern Territory.
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.
Read MoreDirector 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 MoreThe renowned Timothy West plays Lear alongside up-and-coming actors studying at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. The production marks not only the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, but also the 250th anniversary of the Bristol Old Vic and the 70th anniversary of its Theatre School.
Read MoreShakespeare’s play of supernatural forces and bloody ambitions is director Iqbal Kahn’s debut on the Globe stage.
Read More"Hamlet's got the hump, Uncle Claudius is conniving, mother Gertrude's hit the bottle, and girlfriend Ophelia's away with the fairies. No wonder Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are confused. Mysteries, murders and magical music; Bathasar's bemused, Romeo's a wuss and the Friar's on the fiddle, but Juliet Capulet calls the shots in an ice cream war with the Montagues. Rip-roaring romance with a twist.” --description from Fringe Festival programme.
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This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
