York International Shakespeare Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary in April 2025 with a programme that "champions international voices, inclusive storytelling, and the urgent themes of our time."
One of the headline events is Codename Othello, a new play inspired by Shakespeare’s Othello by Ukrainian writer and director Olga Annenko, translated into English by Daria Moskvitina, which "explores the psychological aftershocks of war, identity, and trauma." It will be performed at York St John University on Friday 25 April.
The following evening, the York St John Creative Centre will host D:Space, York’s Ukrainian theatre group, which presents There’s No Clock in the Forest, a new work that blends the Ukrainian classic Mavka (The Forest Song) with Shakespeare’s nature writing, reflecting on exile, mythology and environmental change.
There will be performances from The Netherlands, and also from Croatia to mark Marin Držić Day, dedicated to the father of Croatian theatre who was a near-contemporary of Shakespeare, with the chance to see two of his comedies, Pinch Hoard and Venus and Adonis, performed in English.
The festival's Pass It On ticket initiative, which was launched in 2023 to allow Ukrainian refugees to attend a Kyiv production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, has expanded to offer free tickets to all refugees and asylum seekers.
Philip Parr, Director of the festival said, “these are certainly strange times. War, corruption, moral dilemma. We might wonder what Shakespeare would have written about it, but we only have to read his plays to understand that he knew these problems only too well. The responsibility of theatre makers in our times is no different from that of Shakespeare: to tell the stories of the time and place, and to reflect the world around us."
Dr Saffron Vickers Walking, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at York St John University and York International Shakespeare Festival Adviser, said, “our public lectures and workshops with leading experts offer new ways to understand Shakespeare’s works. Death by Hamlet is a day of talks, workshops and the opening of an exhibition on Hamlet as you’ve never seen it before. Our annual symposium explores Shakespeare and our Histories—all open to the public and free.
“A key aspect of our festival is its ability to bring people together. This year, with guidance from Refugee Action York, we are launching workshops that explore Shakespeare’s flowers for adults and offer a GCSE-level Macbeth session for displaced young people."