Shakespeare Festival Neuss
The Shakespeare Festival Neuss has been held annually since 1991 in a replica of the Globe Theater on the grounds of the Neuss racecourse.
The building
For the State Garden Show in Rheda-Wiedenbrück in 1988 , a replica of the Globe Theater was built based on an idea by Reinhard Schiele, a theater maker who was employed at the Overhagen Palace Theater at the time . Schiele wanted a mobile touring stage that was to be built from wood, true to the model. The project had to be abandoned due to fire protection regulations. The result was a twelve-sided theater building made from a wood and steel construction that was no longer mobile. After the performances during the Federal Garden Show, the theater was not used for two years.
The city of Neuss and the “Neusser Gemeinnütziger Bauverein AG” acquired the building and rebuilt it in 1991 on the grounds of the Neuss horse racing track.
The multi-storey building, the small windows of which are closed with black and white shutters, offers space for around 500 spectators, who sit on several levels at most 10 meters from the stage. In the historical original there were hardly any seats, but that would no longer be conveyable in the present.
The festival
The festival has taken place annually since 1991 and last (2016) lasted around one month in June and July. It is supervised by the cultural officer of the city of Neuss, as artistic director and the production manager. The event is supported by the Friends of the Globe sponsoring group .
The festival offers an annually changing program with up to 30 performances that attract around 15,000 visitors. A space utilization of 90 percent is achieved. The mixture of national and international ensembles that perform Shakespeare's works, some in the original language, on the simple stage without elaborate backdrops, offers stagings that are true to the work as well as contemporary arrangements and unconventional interpretations. Regular participants include the bremer shakespeare company and the Rheinisches Landestheater Neuss .
program
In 1991 the festival began with four productions by the bremer shakespeare company: The Taming of the Shrew , Antonius and Cleopatra , The Storm and The Merry Wives of Windsor . In 1992 the program was expanded internationally with The Medieval Players London , the Keli dance company from India and the Roma Pralipe Theater . The Rheinisches Landestheater Neuss also took part in the festival for the first time. Patrick Spottiswoode from London's Shakespeare's Globe has been performing since 1994, giving a lecture on "Shakespeare and the Globe".
A connection to music theater came about through the semi-operas by Henry Purcell , of which in 2007, after “The Tempest” and “The Fairy Queen”, “King Arthur” from the Rheinisches Landestheater together with Capella Piccola, a choir from Neuss specializing in early music Metamorphosis Ensemble from Cologne and the Art Academy for Media in Cologne.
In addition to frequently played pieces, lesser-known works and modern arrangements are also included in the program. In 1996 the “Théâtre le Ranelagh” from Paris showed an early Italian model for “Romeo and Juliet” in 15 pantomime clown images, the theater group “Nossa Cara” from Brazil in 1995 performed a “Street Hamlet”.
In the 2012 program, the originally Afghan theater Rah-e Sabz ("Path of Hope") brought the comedy of errors . In the context of a country devastated by decades of civil and religious war, the search for family members is no longer a mere comedy. The group had also had to relocate to India since their rehearsal room was bombed. In 2012, the Lithuanian director Oskaras Koršunovas brought Miranda, a highly unusual adaptation of Shakespeare's Tempest, to the stage. There is only one man, Prospero, and one woman, his daughter Miranda; under the conditions of an exile, a constant power struggle develops between the two.