The second theatre premiere at the 74th Festival, co-produced by the Dubrovnik Summer Festival and the Zagreb Youth Theatre, Twelfth Night, or What You Will by Grzegorz Jarzyna and Roman Pawłowski based on the motifs from William Shakespeare's eponymous play had its first performance last night, 21 July at Dubrovnik’s Lovrjenac Fort. The festival audience greeted this contemporary interpretation of the timeless classic with long applause and ovations.
A visually attractive, dynamic play that opens great, "taboo" and painful topics through laughter and exciting love intrigues, brought a fresh director's perspective in approaching one of Shakespeare's most performed and popular comedies of confusion, focusing on fluid sexual identities in the struggle for the right to exist in a patriarchal world. Director Grzegorz Jarzyna saw reading Shakespeare that in the Bard’s works people are not defined by gender, but by love, which is a very powerful message that can be read from his plays and sonnets, that people can love each other in all the ways they feel. It is the most powerful thing that connects people.
In addition to the director Grzegorz Jarzyna, who together with Roman Pawłowski wrote the play’s text, the creative team are costume designer Anna Axer Fijalkowska, set design team AAFGJAP, lighting designer Aleksandr Prowalinski, video projections artist Ivan Marušić-Klif, music composers Marko Levanić and Ivana Starčević, sound engineer Marko Levanić, Šimun Stankov who was in charge of the stage movement, Petra Prša the stage management, and Jelena Kovačič who translated the text of the play from Polish and also did language adaptation.
The ensemble that embodied the roles of protagonists who engage in a risky game based on power and desires consists of: Dado Ćosić in the role of Prince Olivio, later Olivia, Anđela Ramljak as Princess Orsina, later Orsino, Mia Melcher as the non-binary person Violx, later Cesario, Katarina Bistrović Darvaš as the hotel manager Malvolia, Petra Svrtan as the performer Feste, Doris Šarić Kukuljica as Olivio's aunt Tomassa, later Toby, Barbara Prpić as Andrea, later Andrew the tourist, Mateo Videk as Olivio's assistant Mario, later Marija, Toma Medvešek as Zoran the waiter, and DJ and registrar played by Ivana Starčević.
Tickets for the play The Twelfth Night, or What You Will are available via the festival website www.dubrovnik-festival.hr or the service www.ulaznice.hr, at the box office in the Festival Palace (Od Sigurate 1) every day from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and in front of the DTS building (Vukovarska St) from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Zagreb Youth Theatre will present the play on their stage in Zagreb from 23 September.