We create multilingual adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare’s shifts of register and style, his puns and his cultural references are translated to a multilingual Swiss context. His English is mixed with French, German, Swiss German dialects, and Italian. We cut heavily to produce productions of 100 minutes suitable for all, including children.
We also create films shot in locations around the city of Fribourg. Audiences and actors come to ‘own’ Shakespeare; students gain enormous insight into his language and dramaturgy; very pleasingly, a creative community has been created that is now active also beyond the University, in local schools and arts events.
We imitate the production style of Shakespeare’s original players: without elaborate lighting or sets, fast-paced performances do not have to pause for scene changes. The actors’ bodies and a few minimal props, along with Shakespeare’s language, of course, create the sense of place. Our productions are highly portable and can be taken on tour to very diverse performance spaces: art galleries, community centres, factories.
Like Shakespeare’s original actors, our actors interact directly with the audience.
For SAUTE’s anniversary celebration, we adapted Pericles. It is one of Shakespeare’s lesser known plays, so audiences do not have particular expectations; the text is also notoriously corrupt, so we feel quite free to adapt it, but many scenes have great visual potential.
The plot involves numerous voyages and shipwrecks around the Mediterranean. The travels and travails of Pericles and his family portray the various modes in which those who arrive in a place can relate to it – from richly welcomed guest, or helper in distress, to stranger passing through, to exiled foreigner, or disenfranchised 'resident alien’.
Pericles performances venues included an arts centre, an office complex – and a theatre in Rome! We made Pericles a ‘Grand Tourist’, dressed in Romantic style. On his travels he encounters communities marked by different languages, colours, and historical moments, including the classical and medieval: these also reflect classical and medieval sources of Shakespeare’s play. We were delighted to play to appreciative full houses in Fribourg and Biel.
Swiss Stage Bards – Pericles
Halle Bleu, Bluefactory Fribourg, 5 November 2022
The copyright of the photos remains with Tatjana Matic (https://www.instagram.com/tanja_matic_photography/; tanjamaticphotography.com)
