Ëndrra e Një Nate Vere (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) is a 2021 adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. It was directed by Armela Demaj and performed by the members of Teatri Metropol. This production is based on a translation by Jonida Beqo and was also staged in 2019 and 2020.
Bottom and Titania from Ëndrra e Një Nate Vere. Photo from Teatri Metropol. Read More
Bene’s theatre film or televised version of his theatre adaptation of Richard III was made in 1977 and first broadcast on Italian RAI TV in 1981. The film was dedicated to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who replied to the dedication by writing ‘Un manifesto di meno’ on Bene’s art. The text appeared in 1978 in Sovrapposizioni, a book which also contained Bene’s script of Riccardo III as well as his response to Deleuze’s piece. Read More
Zbutja e Kryeneces (Taming of the Shrew) is a 1988 Albanian adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Taming of the Shrew. The play was directed by Fatos Haxhiraj and performed at the Teatri Kombetar in Tirana, Albania. Read More
In 1982, a production of Nata e Dymbëdhjetë (Twelfth Night) directed by Piro Mani was performed at the National Theatre of Albania in Tirana. Read More
Teatro Stabile d’Innovazione Galleria Toledo produced a feature film by the title “Il Re Muore” (The King Dies) directed by Laura Angiulli, founder of Galleria Toledo and company director, and sponsored by the Campania Region and the Italian Ministry of Culture. The movie is freely inspired by the Shakespearean drama “Richard II”, reinterpreting the work in a visionary way, while staying true to the plot and the text. A necessary synthesis which respects the original poetry. Read More
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/estudio-1/estudio-1-fierecilla-domada/3189845/
TV program (or series): “Estudio 1”
Aired on March 21, 1979.
Starring Teresa Rabal (Catalina), Carlos Ballesteros (Petruchio), Agustín González , Manuel Alexandre, Verónica Forqué
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/estudio-1/estudio-1-romeo-julieta/3196610/
Adapter or translator: José Antonio Páramo, based on a text by Antonio Valencia
TV program (or series): “Estudio 1”
Aired on October 6, 1972.
Starring Ana Belén (Julieta), Tony Ibsert (Romeo), Agustín González, Carlos Lemos, Laly Soldevilla, Javier Loyola, Angela Capilla, José Guardiola, Rafael Guerrero, Mario Alex, Jose Carlos Plaza, Víctor Valverde (Teobaldo).
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/estudio-1/estudio-1-otelo/3193951/
Adapter or translator: Antonio Gala
TV program (or series): “Estudio 1”
Aired on April 7, 1972.
Starring Alfredo Aclón (Otelo), Fernando Guillén (Iago), Maribel Martín (Desdémona), Manuel Galiana, Charo Soriano, Carlos Muñoz, Rosa de Alba, Alvaro de Luna, Manuel Vicenta, Jesús Tordesillos (Dux), Sancho Gracia
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/estudio-1/estudio-1-sueno-noche-verano/2620054/
TV program (or series): “Estudio 1”
Aired on April 16, 1971.
Starring Mónica Randall, Carlos Ballesteros, Alfonso del Real, Álvaro de Luna, María Luisa Merlo.
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/estudio-1/estudio-1-mercader-venecia/867717/
Adapter and translator: José Méndez Herrera
TV program (or series): “Estudio 1”
Aired on August 23, 1967.
Starring José Bódalo (Shylock), Gemma Cuervo (Porcia), Julio Núñez (Bassanio), Pablo Sanz (Antonio), Víctor Valverde (Lorenzo), Julia Trujillo (Nerissa), Marisa Paredes (Jessica)
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/estudio-1/estudio-1-julio-cesar/861833/
Adapter or translator: José Méndez Herrera
TV program (or series): “Estudio 1”
Aired on November 24, 1965.
Starring Ismael Merlo (Julio César), Arturo López (Marco Antonio), Luis Prendes (Bruto), Rafael Navarro (Casio), Gaby Álvarez (Calpurnia), Mayrata O’Wisiedo (Porcia)
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
Adapter or translator: Pedro Amalio López
TV program (or series): “Teatro de siempre”
Aired on March 18, 1971.
Starring Jesús Puente (Falstaff), Luisa Sala, Florinda Chico, Alfonso del Real, José Carabias
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/teatro-en-el-archivo-de-rtve/teatro-siempre-ricardo-iii/3196558/
Adapter or translator: Claudio Guerin Hill, based on Antonio Gala’s version
TV program (or series): “Teatro de siempre”.
Aired on August 18, 1967.
Starring José María Prada (Ricardo III), Lola Cardona, Luisa Sala, Paco Morán, Gerardo Malla, Paloma San Basilio.
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/teatro-en-el-archivo-de-rtve/teatro-siempre-rey-lear/3189919/
Adapter or translator: Antonio Gala
Aired on May 12, 1967.
TV program (or series): “Teatro de siempre”
Starring Manuel Dicente (Lear), Asunción Sancho, María José Alfonso, Alicia Hermida, Jaime Blanch, Luis Peña.
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.
https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/estudio-1/estudio-1-macbeth/1770473/
Adapter or translator: Pedro Amalio López (free adaptation based on José María Rincón’s version)
TV program (or series): “Estudio 1”
Aired on September 28, 1966.
Starring Francisco Piquer (Macbeth), Irene Gutiérrez Caba (Lady Macbeth), Tomás Blanco (Macduff), José María Escuer (Banquo), Julio Núñez (Malcolm).
Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.
This television adaptation was first aired on March 21, 1979, in the program “Lletres catalanes” (Catalan letters), that the state-owned Spanish television broadcaster TVE devoted to productions in Catalan for spectators in the region of Catalonia, where Catalan would recover its co-official status (alongside Spanish) at the end of 1979 with the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia. Bilingual novelist Terenci Moix (pseudonym of Ramon Moix i Meseguer) prepared a direct translation in unrhymed verse, abridged the text, and collaborated with director Antonio Chic the television script. Read More
In By Heart, a poem is taught to ten people who had never seen the show before and had no idea that they were about to memorize something in front of an audience. Tiago Rodrigues teaches them lines while he tells stories about his grandmother and reads excerpts from other texts, from George Steiner to Boris Pasternak. Learning something by heart is described or perceived as an act of resistance, and Steiner is quoted: “When ten people know a poem by heart there is nothing the KGB, the CIA or the Gestapo might do. This poem will survive.” Read More
Based on the classical love story from William Shakespeare, the actors tell the story of this ill-fated romance, mixing it with a cheesecake that takes the name of the protagonists. The blood of the lovers is guava jam, the sword fights are conducted with spatulas and a bite of a Rich Tea biscuit can be a delicious alternative to a broken heart. After the success of Hamlet sou eu and Granda Pinta, Teatro Praga are returning to Teatro Maria Matos with a surprising interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic play. Read More
Darkness and red lighting kicks off the murderous and phantasmagorical mood in this puppet theatre production of Macbeth. Although hardly noticeable in the video recording, a horde of idle, motionless puppets furnish the venue, surrounding the audience – and like the audience and like Macbeth, look on, unable to dissuade fate. Puppeteering is, on many levels, a rather fitting form of staging the Scottish Thane-Become-King. Read More
A performance by Teatro Praga. Based on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Henry Purcell’s The Enchanted Island. Critics have observed how, in The Tempest, Shakespeare presents an island in which the virtues and flaws of characters are highlighted. This is the reason the island differs from character to character, depending on their past, personality, and intentions. The island depends on the personality of each person, which is why some have bad dreams and others good ones, some see images of usurpation and others a paradise island. As Harold Goddard puts it, “To innocent senses the isle itself is pure loveliness; to corrupted ones it is no better than a swamp”. Or, as Northrop Frye argues, “In this island the quality of one’s dreaming is an index of character”. Likewise, in Teatro Praga’s adaptation of The Tempest we see ourselves. Read More
In the program notes that accompany Teatro Praga’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, members of the audience discover that what they are about to see “is a celebration in the pursuit of happiness and a tribute to power to the sound of Purcell and with a contemporary flavor, our flavor”. The notes further describe how “the production wants to provide enjoyment and relaxation” as, after all, “Why theater when all you want to think about is Summer and Love?” Those sitting in the theater will soon discover that this is not what one would consider a traditional adaptation of Shakespeare, in the sense that the text has been erased and rewritten, while Purcell’s Fairy Queen and a number of contemporary plastic artists have been called upon to reinterpret the bard’s work. Read More
In this children’s production of Hamlet, “to play” implies amusing or entertaining oneself while hearing a story, but also pretending to be someone else. These two ways of experiencing theater – observing it from the audience’s perspective and playing a role in it – have been joined together so that the children realize what it truly means, as the title of the show indicates, for one to be Hamlet (“Hamlet sou eu” [“I am Hamlet”]). Read More
Teatro da Garagem’s production of Hamlet, staged by Carlos Pessoa, trusts in minimal resources: the actors are mostly dressed in black and there are very few props. The set contains only a large wooden box which the actors move around several times in order to rearrange the space according to the scenes, so the box can be a stand where the characters sit to watch the play and a grave which hides half of the gravedigger’s body before the remains of Yorick pop out. Read More
In “African Tales by Shakespeare,” director Krzysztof Warlikowski and actors from Nowy Teatr return to Shakespeare in a production which places Othello, The Merchant of Venice and King Lear, alongside with John Maxwell Coetzee’s Summertime and Wajdi Mouawad’s monologues (which were especially written for the play). In this thought-provoking five-hour theatre show, Shakespeare’s protagonists – Lear, Othello and Shylock – are depicted as outcasts who share a single fate and are thus played by the same actor. Read More
Mala Voadora is well known in Portugal for the way it questions theatrical mechanisms, which is why it usually chooses contemporary texts over a classical repertoire. For their first Shakespeare, the company asked Fernando Villas Boas, one of Portugal’s main translators of the author, to write a version of Hamlet’s First Quarto (also called the “bad quarto”), which had not been previously translated. The text was then cut and adapted for the stage with some changes (lines of Hamlet were included and minor scenes were rewritten so as to create an organic whole). Read More
Two Portuguese choreographers – Vítor Ruiz and Sofia Dias – were chosen to impersonate Antony and Cleopatra in this adaptation, in which Tiago Rodrigues creates his own text, borrowing freely from Shakespeare’s play and Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. In this show, both actors are on stage: Sofia describes Antony’s behavior, while Vítor characterizes Cleopatra, their lines representing what each character sees, says and does, so that what is usually left off stage – the text’s didascalia – has here been integrated into the text. Read More
This TV version of Bene’s Otello is based on a video recording made in the Torino RAI Studios in 1979. The editing was done more than twenty years later, in 2001, by RAI Educational, commissioned by Bene himself, who supervised the entire process. Otello’s first cue is: “E’ la causa, anima mia” (“It is the cause, my soul”, 1’01”) Read More
Rebellion arises from an otherwise peaceful world. Characters wander eternally in this war-torn world, telling their stories like specters. Peace comes after a long Civil War. Richard of Gloucester, a crippled and deformed man, observes how his brothers enjoy the power. He decides to follow a peculiar path to seize power. His excessive ambition leads him to the throne of England. RIII, adapted from Shakespeare’s history play, is a theatrical production with a minimalist stage set. The empty space on stage is filled gradually by nine characters who tell their own various stories. Read More
The worldwide and so many times staged text of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is performed by a young theatre troupe. Alone on stage, without adults, Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Benvolio and the rest of friends that – we suppose – should be on stage, in fact are seen here as an urban tribe, will invade the setting in the same way as if they were in fair Verona. A setting where bodies are both set designs and objects, complements for the body, in the sequence of events for the actor. So we shall see the characters, celebrating their bodies and tender age, in a plaza, dancing, singing, fighting and “playing” to stage Romeo and Juliet, playing that they are going a bit crazy with their tasks. In this manner, clothed with the text and white robes, these young people will go Crazy for Romeo and Juliet (Locos X Romeo y Julieta). Read More
Romeo y Julieta, a new adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, produced by OFF Teatre and directed by José Zamit was performed on July 3, 2012 at the Teatro Olympia in Valencia, Spain. OFF Teatre, an alternative fringe drama school and theatre company founded by Rafael Cruz Izquierdo (Figueres, 1967 – Valencia, 2008) in 2003, has become the benchmark for the independent performing arts in the Valencian Community (Spain). This counter-cultural space, as originally conceived by Cruz, was created in response to those fundamental and collaborative ideas enacted by most European states during the consolidation of the EU at the beginning of the XXI century. Read More
Troilo e Cressida (Trolius and Cressida) is a 2009 Italian stage adaptation performed by members of the Teatro dei Borgia and directed by Gianpiero Borgia. Read More
This production of King Lear by the Belarus Free Theatre was first staged at the Globe Theatre in London as part of the 2012 Globe to Globe Festival (April 23 to June 9), and brought back to the Globe in 2013 (September 23 to 28). A theatre in exile from a totalitarian state, the Belarus Free Theatre drew on the history of reading Shakespeare in the Soviet Union, as well as on the current situation in Belarus, to comment on the cruelty, violence, and individual vulnerability generated under the conditions of dictatorship. Read More
This Italian adaptation of Julius Caesar was performed at the ‘Globe to Globe’ Festival in London in 2012. The production was winner of the Certamen Almagro Off – Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico de Almagro (Spain). Read More
POOR POOR LEAR is a one-woman show by Finnish writer-performer Nina Sallinen. She portrays an elderly actress doing a farewell performance, a solo production of King Lear, in her small apartment. Read More
This 2002 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is directed by German poet and director Michael Roes. He later published a novel Nah Inverness (2004), which features two diary accounts. Read More
