I was called by Numeriprimi who wanted to stage a Shakespearean play in an imaginative way at the Teatro del Tempo in Parma, Italy. For this company of young actors, who had just graduated from a professional course supported by the European Union, I chose The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
In addition to providing an original translation, I dramaturged the script in several directions:
- I substituted several scenes with speechless actions to take advantage of opportunities for physical theatre;
- to better employ one of Numeriprimi’s performers, I substituted the clown character with a winged Cupid on roller skates who recited aphorisms from the humorous Murphy’s Law of Love, a prominent theme in the play;
- finally, I added several songs, each in fact a Shakespearean sonnet, translated into Italian and set to original music by Marco Caronna.
With the tunes played by Luca Savazzi and sung by a gifted vocalist and company member, the show came to resemble a musical.
Below you find both an 8 minute promo video and the two parts of the full show:
