1574. Venice is in turmoil. News spreads through the streets and canals: Henry III of Valois, on his way to Paris to be crowned King of France, will spend a night in the Serenissima. An immense honor for the Doge and the lagoon city. Giulio Pasquati and Girolamo Salimbeni, a pair of charlatans and acrobats with turbulent pasts, are commissioned to put on a show in honor of the prince. Not just any story, of course, but the greatest love story ever written: Romeo and Juliet. Two hours to prepare for the performance, rehearse the show, but above all: where to find the right ‘Juliet’, chaste and pure, for Prince Henry to admire? And then the voluptuous Veronica Franco, poetess and ‘honored courtesan’ of the Republic, appears in the square, willing to take on the unlikely role of the unblemished young girl. We thus witness an ‘open rehearsal’, in the manner of the comedians in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the Bard’s famous
story takes shape and is distorted in a mixture of plots, dialects, songs, improvisations, sounds, duels, and pantomimes. Shakespeare becomes, for us, living material in which to immerse our hands, to bring to the stage, through popular theater, the great passions of man, Othello’s jealousies, the prejudices of the merchant, storms and shipwrecks, in a dance between life and death, knives and poisons.
ROMEO AND JULIET
LOVE IS A TRICKSTER
original story by Marco Zoppello
directed by Marco Zoppello
with Anna De Franceschi, Michele Mori, and Marco Zoppello
costumes by Antonia Munaretti
set design by Alberto Nonnato
masks by Roberto Maria Macchi
duels by Giorgio Sgaravatto
original music by Veronica Canale
photos by Serena Pea
production Stivalaccio Teatro/Teatro Stabile del Veneto
year of production 2015
SHOW TIMES
December 31 at 8:30 p.m.
January 1 at 4:00 p.m.
