Ninth Edition of Theater Shakespeare Festival: “And nothing is but what is not”

The unique international Shakespeare Festival, which is held from July 1 to 5, with the support of UNIQA osiguranje, consists this year as well of a program of modern world productions of Shakespeare’s works. The ninth Shakespeare Festival once again shows how others perform Shakespeare and why, what they find in his works, and then also where our theater scene is in all that.

Within the festival, in two theater half-times, a total of 7 plays will be performed – 4 in July and 3 in October.

In the environment of the Vila Stankovic residence, on the main festival stage, theaters from Italy, Montenegro and Norway will present themselves to the audience.

For the first time since its founding, the Shakespeare Festival will be opened by a dance-play, namely, Hamlet, performed by the internationally recognized Italian dance troupe imPERFECT DANCERS COMPANY, under the artistic guidance of its founders, Walter Matteini and Ina Broeckx (former Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo dancers), which has been presenting its repertoire all over the world in the past years: in North America (Canada and the USA), South America (Colombia, Brazil and Uruguay), Africa (Tanzania), Asia (Israel and Turkey), Europe (Spain, France, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Armenia…). They guested with Hamlet at numerous important world festivals – Hong Kong Shakespeare Festival, Monaco Dance Forum, Gdansk Shakespeare Festival.

The Taming of the Shrew, one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies, directed by the well-known North Macedonian director Dejan Projkovski, whose successful interpretations of Shakespeare’s works are well-known to our audience as well, will be performed on the second day of the festival.

The Shakespeare Festival in Serbia is one of the initiators of the big international project of the European Shakespeare Festival Network ShakeSPHERE 2021/2022.

Following the open invitation to the world theater community for the most original artistic concept of a Shakespeare’s work, the European Shakespeare Festival Network received 42 applications from 25 countries of the world.

The Norwegian project Romeo and Juliet and Other Catastrophic Love Affairs was pronounced the best by an international jury, thereby being included in the programs of the Gdansk Shakespeare Festival (Poland) / Craiova Shakespeare Festival (Romania) / Helsingor Hamlet Scenen Festival (Denmark) and the Shakespeare Festival Serbia.

The first half-time of the Shakespeare Festival is closed by the play Hamlet – the Criminal Record of a Monarchy, by the famous director Livija Pandur, performed by the Marin Drzic Theater (Kazaliste Marina Drzica) from Dubrovnik, as one of the most important works in Croatian theater this year. Croatian critics describe it as “a play which senses the beginning of the Third World War and showcases a nuclear explosion”.

The second part of the Shakespeare Festival, planned for October/November, will be marked by the famous British theater troupe Forced Entertainment, which performs the entirety of Shakespeare’s works. In the play Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare, six actors create digest versions of all Shakespeare’s plays, using a collection of everyday items for characters on the stage, which is represented by a simple table. This sensational project of Forced Entertainment, in which 36 Shakespeare’s plays are performed for several days in front of a total of 1,800 spectators, has taken part in the past seasons in nearly all the most important world theater festivals: Berliner Festspiele, Epidaurus festival Athens, Royal Shakespeare Company World Shakespeare Festival, as well as in London, New York, Chicago, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Los Angeles. Articles about the Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare project have been published in The New York Times and The Guardian.

The Shakespeare Festival enters its final with the premiere performance of Macbeth directed by Nikita Milivojevic. The Serbian National Theater, the Belgrade Drama Theater, the Theater City Budva and the Novi Sad Theater are all taking part in this new ambitious production of the Shakespeare Festival.

The accompanying program is meant for the younger festival audience. After performing Hamlet, imPerfect Dancers Company will hold a workshop at the premises of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, and in October, Pozoriste lektira Vladimir Jevtovic will perform Romeo and Juliet for the high-school students of the municipality of Indjija.

The program of the 9th Shakespeare Festival was announced by Nikita Milivojevic, the director and founder of the festival, in the fairytale-like environment of the “Sapat” wine atelier in Novi Slankamen.

– This year as well, the Shakespeare Festival will remind us that Shakespeare’s world is the real world, the one we live in. In it, we once again discover that “nothing is but what is not”. Still, we are at least a year older, and Shakespeare is once again younger.

Ahead of the institutions that supported this event, other speakers included Jelena Dobrovic Bojanovic, Assistant Provincial Secretary for Culture, Public Information and Relations with Religious Communities, Nemanja Milojevic, a representative of the Municipality of Indjija, and Sonja Maric, SEE Senior Leader Brand & Communications at UNIQA osiguranje Serbia.

– I am glad that UNIQA and the Shakespeare Festival are continuing to perform together at the authentic international stage of the gorgeous Vila Stankovic. As a company for which supporting culture is one of the important items of socially responsible business operations and an investment in a certain richness of spirit, UNIQA has been proudly supporting the Shakespeare Festival for nine years now. We are glad to contribute to the festival’s growth year after year with our support, bringing us the best plays from the local and international productions every time. This year as well, we will enjoy together modern interpretations of the works of the biggest playwright, the way we are used to – under an open sky. We eagerly await another unforgettable edition of the Shakespeare Festival, which, through new, different and unexpected performances, confirms over and over again that, when it comes to Shakespeare, “nothing is but what is not” – said Sonja Maric, SEE Senior Leader Brand & Communications at UNIQA osiguranje Serbia.

In 2019, the European Festival Network officially included the international Shakespeare Festival on the list of the most important ones on the Old Continent. Designed so as to evoke the era of the world’s biggest playwright and foster his memory through the performance of plays under an open sky in an authentic way, since the beginning, the Shakespeare Festival has been organized with the support of the Provincial Government, the Municipality of Indjija, the Ministry of Culture, the City of Novi Sad, UNIQA osiguranje. The founding of the Shakespeare Festival in Serbia was initiated by the director Nikita Milivojevic following the premiere of his Henry VI at the famous Globe Theatre in London in May 2012. In addition to his desire to reveal Shakespeare to us in a different way, Nikita Milivojevic was guided by the idea of having a state residence, Vila Stankovic – an extraordinary space closed to the public in Serbia, be turned into an attractive cultural-tourism spot.

The tickets for the 9th Shakespeare Festival can be bought from June 17 at all Tickets sales locations.

Vlada AP Vojvodina

Ministarstvo kulture Republike Srbije

Grad Novi Sad

Opština Inđija

UNIQA neživotno osiguranje a.d.o. Beograd

Barik d.o.o. Novi Slankamen

Sapat wine atelier

Marin Drzic Theater Dubrovnik

Shakespeare Festival

imPerfect Dancers Company

Hamlet

Macbeth

Henry VI

Walter Matteini

Ina Broeckx

Sonja Maric

Nikita Milivojevic

Livija Pandur

Nemanja Milojevic

Hong Kong Shakespeare Festival

Monaco Dance Forum

Gdansk Shakespeare Festival

European Shakespeare Festival Network

ShakeSPHERE 2021 2022

Romeo and Juliet and Other Catastrophic Love Affairs

Forced Entertainment theater troupe

Berliner Festspiele

Epidaurus festival Athens

Royal Shakespeare Company World Shakespeare Festival