About the production

Start

7 p.m.

End

9 p.m.

Shakespeare's sonnets are regarded as a highlight of Renaissance poetry and of European poetry in general. In artistic terms, they are on a par with the poet's dramas, which have always been a focal point of the Lausitz Festival's theatre productions. The Englishman's 154 lyrical masterpieces were published as a cycle in 1609. In them, a speaker addresses a young man and a mysterious, dark lady. In this triangle of textual-sexual desire, all the poems revolve around basic themes of human existence – love, beauty, transience, death - and unfold a polyphonic common ‘we’ in the intimate lyrical dialogue between »I« and »you«.

The theatricalisation of Shakespeare's sonnets is a tradition that will be continued at the opening of this year's Lausitz Festival. For the poems can be understood and staged as dramatic vignettes, as in them a speaker addresses an addressee and thus evokes a potentially dramatic event. And even if a counterpart is not audible, the lyrical speech always seems to be a response to an inaudible utterance or to provide the occasion for a subsequent reply. In any case, the space that Shakespeare's texts open up is a dialogue space. Its empty spaces awaken and fuel our visual and scenic imagination. In this respect, the transformation of lyrical speech into dramatic speech is obvious. The reading or recitation of a poem is transformed into a theatrical event.

Austrian theatre artist Michael Sturminger, who is at home as a director and author in all stage genres, brings Shakespeare's poetry into a lively dialogue with the beauty of the disused Louise briquette factory at the opening of this year's Lausitz Festival. He sends the audience on a scenic and musical journey through the inner and outer worlds of condensed language and coal dust. So he allows the audience to look inside the face and bowels of verse and industrial architecture.

Persistence through transformation – if you like, the old briquette factory and Shakespeare's lyrical monodramatic miniatures find a common denominator in this. Just as the factory's active days are long behind it, the beloved and coveted addressees of the sonnets are inevitably subject to transience. And just as the factory blossoms and survives anew and differently by virtue of its transformation into an industrial museum and a venue for cultural events, the lovers addressed in the sonnets awaken to new, eternal life through Shakespeare's poetry and its theatrical visualisation. For example, the 18th sonnet »Shall I liken thee to a summer's day?« states:

» [...] Yet thy eternal summer shall not weary,

Nor shall all the beauty you have fade away,

Nor shall you wander in death's dark shadow

When thou shalt endure in eternal verse

As long as he who breathes has eyes to read

As long as this lives and in it lives your being.«

In this correspondence, the »Louise« briquette factory becomes a sensual and sensuous stage for a production of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Written and directed by: Michael Sturminger

A co-production with Max Reinhardt Seminar Vienna and Salzburg Global Seminar Schloss Leopoldskron

Made possible by Sparkassenstiftung »Zukunft Elbe-Elster-Land«