Taming of the Shrew | TESZT 2024

“The Taming of the Shrew” is an original project, blending diverse styles and genres to converse with the dramatic canon and our contemporary perspective of it. A multitude of theoretical interpretations and critical analyses, often contradictory, result in the need of a reevaluation of Shakespeare and his work without merely critiquing or defending it. Most commentators concur that understanding his position as an author requires considering the audiences and social context in which Shakespeare himself lived and worked.

During our artistic process, we tried to explore all these layers, analyze every segment of the play by commenting, intervening, confronting, and searching for contradictions, and thereby creating new spaces for intertextuality and meta-theatrical methods. Our guiding principle was to always consider what is hidden in the background of seemingly irrelevant details, what is behind the situations we laugh at, which comedic patterns have become established and why, what that can tell us about the social patterns presently normalized; and, finally, what is our personal responsibility in all this.

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Based on motifs from William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

Concept and direction: Selma Spahić

Dramaturgy by: Emina Omerović

Set design: Matija Blašković

Costume design: Selena Orb

Choreography: Ena Kurtalić

Music by: Nenad Kovačić 

Lighting design: Aleksandar Čavlek

Masks created by: Miljenko Sekulić

Costume design assistant: Marina Uroić

Stage manager: Mirela Tihava

Based on translations by Mate Maras and Milan Bogdanović

The ballad The Cruel Shrew translated by: Mirza Purić

Some of the text has been developed through improvisation with the cast members

Cast: Linda Begonja, Borko Perić, Marko Makovičić, Dražen Čuček, Ines Bojanić, Jakov Zovko

 

​No age restrictions

Running time: 1 h 30 min (no intermission)

Performed in Croatian, with English, Romanian and Hungarian translation

Part of

TESZT 2024

TESZT 2024