ETV Shakespeare Academy Festival

The Verona Theater Summer opens to the international dimension, with a particular focus on the new generations of actors and their way of relating to the Shakespearean universe.

The new project, created in collaboration with the Teatro Stabile del Veneto – Teatro Nazionale, focuses on young people, questioning them in the first person about how they live and perceive Shakespeare and his texts, in the most traditional forms as well as through rewritings, adaptations, and reinterpretations.

Works from 4 European Theater Academies will be hosted, coming from France, the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Macedonia, putting scenic visions and practices in comparison. Alongside them are also the recent graduates from the Carlo Goldoni Theater Academy and the young talents from the Spazio Teatro Giovani project.

It starts in Italy on September 10 with the students of Spazio Teatro Giovani, who present “AMID TWO WORLDS. Another Romeo another Juliet”. The story of an impossible love is presented in a contemporary key, with a script set in New York in the aftermath of the Twin Towers tragedy. On September 13 “D (AS DESDEMONA)” features the Skopje Dance Academy. Choreographer Risima Risimkin brings to the stage the figure of Desdemona, exploring her emotional charge in the context of epic themes of love, envy, jealousy, and murder.

The Carlo Goldoni Theater Academy of the Teatro Stabile del Veneto – Teatro Nazionale will be on stage on September 16 with “JUST A DREAM”: a rewriting of Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” that attempts to investigate the theme of power. On September 18, the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade presents "SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF DENMARK!", a vision of Hamlet rich in symbolic elements, between dream and reality, capable of evoking something mysterious, which the protagonist himself will struggle to fully understand.

Coming from the United Kingdom is the East 15 Acting School with its “ROMEO & JULIET ARE DEAD” scheduled for September 19. Another rewriting of “Romeo and Juliet” where in the Underworld, far from one another and unable to speak, they traverse the afterlife hoping to embrace again, meeting other Shakespearean characters with similar tragic destinies, who have found their own ways to communicate in this wordless world, drawing on various codes of theatre. The final performance of this showcase will be “LOGES by Titus Andronicus” on September 20 presented by La Serre Company (France), a company of former students of the Théâitre National de Bretagne.