The Royal Shakespeare Company is to present in Stratford three productions that are part of Projekt Europa “exploring, celebrating and interrogating our relationship with Europe”.
Europeana, Peer Gynt and Blindness and Seeing will be performed by 16 actors, most of whom will appear in two or all three of the productions which will run in the Swan Theatre between April and September 2020. In most cases, roles will be decided during the rehearsal process.
The company includes Nandi Bhebhe, Hannah Bristow, Jacqui Dubois, Rina Fatania, Sandy Foster, Georgia Frost, Richard Hope, Miles Jovian, Richard Katz, Robert Luckay, David Luque, Barbara Marten, Ako Mitchell, Chris New, Bathsheba Piepe and Brigid Zengeni.
RSC associate artist Maria Åberg will curate the project with Judith Gerstenberg. Åberg will direct Europeana. Born in Hamburg, Gerstenberg has worked as a dramaturg in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
A number of leading European theatre artists will join them for the season including Barbara Frey who will direct Peer Gynt and Tiago Rodrigues who will direct Blindness and Seeing.
Åberg said, “from directors to designers, costume designers to dramaturgs, composers to video designers, Projekt Europa offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity to see world-class European theatre made in Stratford.
“The majority of the artists are making work for a British audience for the first time, so the season really does present a unique opportunity to experience a genuine theatrical experiment at a landmark moment in our shared history.”
Europeana will open the season from 9 April until 25 July. Åberg and Gerstenberg’s new adaptation of the satirical Czech novel by Patrik Ouředník compresses 100 years of European history into a “fast-paced and eclectic narrative”.
Peer Gynt, a new staging of Ibsen's European myth, will follow from 1 May until 23 September. Blindness and Seeing completes the season from 1 August until 26 September. Based on the Nobel Prize-winning novels by José Saramago, Blindness and Seeing is a “poetic and evocative vision for the future”.