The second-year students from the university of Warsaw had a very interesting task. Using the lovers of various Shakespeare dramas they had to create new stories, leaving the original plays behind. According to the students they didn't have to stay true to the original plots, they only had to use the text, but they could work with that anyway they wanted: take out parts, rearrange them, give them to different characters and so on. Because of this freedom, very different performances were born, though not everyone received the same plays: we saw two Romeo and Juliets, and one each of Hamlet and Ophelia, Troilus and Cressida and the Macbeths. If would be interesting to know why the teachers chose these plays. Love is an important factor in all of them, though sometimes it is the main plot, other times only one of several.
Creating some new and different stories from so well-known texts is very difficult - since when we hear even one line of text, we think of the Shakespearean story and immediately place the scene in that context. Despite this, there were times we could let go of our preconceptions, and got to know a totally new pair of lovers. The best example is Hamlet and Ophelia. Their original stories and their causes are forgotten, and that is why we can see these emblematic Shakespeare-scenes in a whole new light. The Mousetrap this time around is played for Ophelia, and not for the royal couple, while Ophelia's death is rather a metaphorical death here, not physical: the girl disappears from the boy, but doesn't commit suicide.
Creating some new and different stories from so well-known texts is very difficult - since when we hear even one line of text, we think of the Shakespearean story and immediately place the scene in that context. Despite this, there were times we could let go of our preconceptions, and got to know a totally new pair of lovers. The best example is Hamlet and Ophelia. Their original stories and their causes are forgotten, and that is why we can see these emblematic Shakespeare-scenes in a whole new light. The Mousetrap this time around is played for Ophelia, and not for the royal couple, while Ophelia's death is rather a metaphorical death here, not physical: the girl disappears from the boy, but doesn't commit suicide.
But there were Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth adaptations that seemed more like summaries of the original plays.
Even though the directors thought so differently about their task, these scenes came together to form a complete, coherent world. This is helped by the actors, who play in very similar styles, and the suprisingly integrated scenography: everything we see on the stage is black and white, maybe red. Only Cressida's pink bathing towel is different.
Domokos Kovács
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