Back to the Camploy Theatre “Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival”. Eight performances in original language (with subtitles) and in English to enhance in an experimental and innovative way the work of Shakespeare, from 24 to 31 August. A multicultural project that will range from Othello by the Georgian director Tsuladze, to contemporary Macedonian dance to the poem Venus and Adonis.
The Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival is part of the Estate Teatrale Veronaes – Verona Summer Theatre – program and will include eight premieres by artists from around the world in the last week of August: the United Kingdom, Georgia, Macedonia, Sweden, Romania, and this year, the United States. The aim is to combine the work of Shakespearean scholars and artists, offering new ways to perceive the performance and allowing the audience to discover fresh perspectives to the English playwright’s works.
This year marks the festival’s third edition, and for the first time, it is the only Italian reality to be a part of the European Shakespeare Festivals Network, which brings together Europe’s most major Shakespearean festivals. This year also marks the beginning of a relationship with the Teatro Stabile del Veneto, the region’s only national theater, with the goal of converting the Veneto into a European theatrical stage of excellence.
Given the festival’s internationality, the collaboration with the Skenè Center’s summer school “Shakespeare and the Mediterranean”, which was dedicated this year to the study of “Antonio and Cleopatra”, has been renewed for the next edition, which already has more than 100 young subscribers from all over the world.
The program of the Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival
First stop of the festival: Georgia. Thursday, August 24 will be staged Othello, the drama of jealousy par excellence, in an adaptation by Georgian director Levan Tsuladze. Tsuladze is an artist of avant-garde productions, so personal and out of the box that it will offer an unprecedented interpretation in the national premiere co-produced by the Theatre Studio 42 of Tiblisi and the Teatro Stabile del Veneto – Teatro Nazionale.
With an intercontinental flight, you will then travel to America. Friday, August 25 will be the turn of the monodrama Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender, written and starring the American actress, director, teacher, writer and scholar of worldwide fame. The show is based on her personal experiences as an activist for inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility and for the promotion of women’s rights and racial equality.
The third show of the festival will be Richard III, which will catapult spectators in Romania. On Saturday, August 26, the opera will be performed by Romanian artists of the Aradi Kamaraszínház Theatre Company with Caro Balyan as the protagonist. In the reinterpretation of the work, the deformity of the protagonist is manifested only when he looks in the mirror and increases more and more in correspondence with his political rise, during which Richard manipulates, seduces and kills those who pose as an obstacle.
Feast, a production composed by Olivia Negrean for the English company Parabbola, will then take the audience from a dramatic plot to an international pink banquet. On Sunday, August 27, six female Shakespearean characters from different regions of the world and historical periods will meet in the kitchen on the Camploy stage. Emilia brings the wine, Ofelia takes care of the salad, Lady Macbeth thinks of the soup, Imogen takes care of the barbecue, while Lady Anna and Isabella are responsible for the preparation of the dessert. Six women, each with a tale to tell, and a production with a new perspective on Shakespearean heroines.
Monday, August 28 the turn of poetry. The English artists from The Noon Tide Sun will propose in original language the poem Venus and Adonis revisited in a contemporary key and adapted to the present day by Christopher Hunter thanks to music and sounds that will transform the first best-Shakespearean seller in an exciting poetic monologue. The poem is in fact often analyzed as a frivolous example of erotic literature but actually contains a dark world, where themes such as love, desire and death are explored.
Monday, August 28 is poetry day. The English artists from The Noon Tide Sun will present in original language the poem Venus and Adonis revisited in a contemporary key and adapted to the present day by Christopher Hunter, with music and sounds that will transform Shakespeare’s first best-seller into an exciting poetic monologue. The poem is frequently analyzed as a lighthearted example of erotic literature, but it actually contains a dark world that explores issues such as love, desire, and death.
From poetry to dancing, Macedonia will be the next destination. The Skopje Dance Theatre will offer a modern Macedonian dance show based on the personality of the Shakespearean heroine Lady Macbeth, who struggles with her husband’s rise to power, on August 29. Risma Risimkin’s jazz music and choreography will accompany the psychological study of the characters, which will touch on themes like power and control but also madness and the inability to deal with what was committed.
On Thursday, August 30th, we will travel to Sweden, where the most beloved Shakespeare’s dialogues and soliloquies will mingle with the 80s music hits to create an irreverent ultra pop version. A theatrical-musical show where the artists of the AbsoLutemusicDuo: Malin Sternbrink and Niklas Atterhall, will talk about love, jealousy, eternal until the obsessive Hamletic doubt.
The grand finale in America, with the Naked Shakes and their The death of Kings, an adaptation by Irwin Appel inspired by eight of Shakespeare’s historical dramas, from Richard II to Richard III. The company will stage a new and unpublished version, specially designed for the Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival, where narration, choral work, music and live sounds will intertwine.
Tickets
Tickets are in advance on the website www.boxol.it at a cost of 10 euros, reduced to 8 euros for under 26 and over 65.
