Shakespearology

Concept and Direction by SOTTERRANEO

Playwright DANIELE VILLA

On Stage WOODY NERI

An Impossible Interview with William Shakespeare.

Jerome Salinger stated that ‘What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it’.

For Sotterraneo, it has been our desire for some time now that one of our theatre productions resemble that phone call. In particular, we always wanted to call up and meet Sir William Shakespeare in the flesh, and have a chat with him about his life, what has been done with his works, and more than 400 years of his post-mortem history on and off stage. It is going to be a bit like taking Van Gogh to the Van Gogh Museum or Dante among the crowds visiting his Florentine home. We will start talking to Shakespeare about the collective imaginary. Of course, it may not be the real, authentic, original William Shakespeare – yet if we succeed in meeting at least one of the possible Shakespeares, then it would still be a breakthrough. —— Sotterraneo

Shakespearology isn't a typical one-man show. It's a video call. A live, cross-century connection between a dusty literary icon and three irreverent theatre artists who refuse to let him rest in peace. They've got questions. The clichés. The conspiracy theories. The myths we've all heard a thousand times. And they're putting them straight to the man himself.

But here's the twist—Shakespeare talks back. And he is not polite.

He tears through the textbook version of his life. He shrugs off the academic baggage. He dismantles "Shakespearology" with sarcasm, wit, and a healthy dose of theatrical mischief. For once, the Bard isn't being interpreted—he's doing the interpreting. He turns the mic on the audience and starts asking his own questions.

After four hundred years of being studied, dissected, and reinvented, he finally gets his say. What emerges isn't the marble statue on a pedestal. It's a living, breathing, gloriously unpredictable Shakespeare—funny, flawed, and far more interesting than any footnote.

Sotterraneo

Sotterraneo theatre company began working as a research collective in Florence in 2005. The group is comprised of long-term members as well as a cluster of collaborators whose numbers vary according to the project at hand. The resulting working group aims to investigate the linguistic possibilities of theater – a place characterized by a physical and intellectual time, both old and hopelessly contemporary. Sotterraneo like to experiment with different formats, producing cross-cutting and stratified pieces in search of form and content. These range from front shows to site-specific performances, and tend to focus on today’s contradictions and dark sides. Further, Sotterraneo’s avant-pop approach seeks to narrate our times whilst striking a balance between the collective imagination and the most unconventional thinking. In this context, the stage is a place where citizenship is formed, as well as everyday gestures of culture testing the audience’s critical consciousness. After all, the audience is the company’s main interlocutor and at the heart of all their projects. 

Daniele Villa is co-director and playwright for the collective Sotterraneo, with whom he has worked over the years across a range of formats, including theatre productions, performances, site-specific works, opera direction, talk shows, and more. The group's productions have been staged at numerous major national and international festivals and theatres, receiving multiple awards, including the Premio Hystrio, the Be Festival First Prize, and three Premio UBU awards. Sotterraneo is an Associate Artist of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, a member of the Fies Factory project, and is in residence at Teatri di Pistoia.

Woody Neri is an actor, singer, and director from Tuscany, born in Pescia in 1979. He graduated from the Alessandra Galante Garrone School of Theatre in Bologna and, in 2005, received the Premio Hystrio alla Vocazione, an award dedicated to emerging young talents on the Italian stage. He then embarked on a career that led him to work with stage masters such as Gabriele Lavia, Umberto Orsini, and Glauco Mauri. He has also collaborated with contemporary directors and companies, including Andrea Baracco, Jacopo Gassman, and Sotterraneo.