Born in Belgium in 1958, Ivo van Hove staged his own texts starting in 1981 before becoming the artistic director of different theatre troupes (AKT, AKT-Vertikaal, De Tijd). In 1990, he became director of the Zuidelijk Toneel which he left in 2001 to become the director of the Toneelgroep Amsterdam. His stagings were presented at the Edinburgh Festival, the Venice Biennial, the Holland Festival (whose artistic director he was from 1997 to 2004) but also in Hamburg, Lisbon, Verona, Hanover, Porto, Rome, Créteil, Stuttgart and New York. He has staged over 60 plays travelling through the universe of Shakespeare (Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet…), Marguerite Duras, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Maxime Gorki, Frank Wedekind, Eugene O'Neill, Sophocles, Euripides, Albert Camus, Tennessee Williams, Tony Kushner, John Cassavetes,… looking in classic works as well as contemporary ones that talk about our period, that can answer our immediate as well as our timeless questions. He has been a professor at the Antwerp Conservatory since 1984 and also became interested in opera, presenting Lulu by Alban Berg in 1999, then The Makropoulus Affair by Leos Janácek, Iolanta by Tchaikovsky and Wagner's Ring cycle in 2006-2008.
Very much in fashion during the Elizabethan period, the heros of antique Rome also inspired William Shakespeare (1564-1616) who had his historical drama Julius Caesar staged in London in 1599, inspired by Plutarch's work Parallel Lives on the Greeks and Romans. Two Roman tragedies followed, Anthony and Cleopatra in 1606 and Coriolanus in 1607, also inspired by Plutarch. At the same period, Shakespeare staged Macbeth and King Lear.
Ivo van Hove's ambitious and coherent project presents three Roman tragedies by Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra, to question politics through three adventures that present the story and the tragic fates of men and women confronted with power. In the same way as Shakespeare read Plutarch and his lives of illustrious men to analyze, scrutinize and examine as closely as possible the functioning of political power, Ivo van Hove borrows from Shakespeare to revive our reflection on what may seem immutable in this power's practices. Ambition, rivalry, the certainty of being the providential man or the supreme saviour, the demagogy inherent in democracy, the necessity of reductive communication, the rejection of the evolution of forms of power, the chronic impotence hidden in lyrical speeches, the repression of the intimate are themes that appear in these Shakespearean tragedies that Ivo van Hove puts in the centre of our contemporary world, in places of power as we know them, international conference rooms or television studios. Extremely close to the original text, he communicates these questions so close to those that we can formulate on our democratic systems. The idea here is not to judge but to analyze mechanisms while remaining on a human scale. Coriolanus, the character who rejects democracy by denying the weight of the common people, Brutus who wants to save democracy by killing the demagogue Caesar, Anthony who can no longer get out of the imbroglio mixing his political future with his love life, are these heroes out of Roman history so far from us today? Ivo van Hove, recounting these moments in history today, refuses to accept the idea that politics is only manipulation out of reach of citizens' free choice. In a Europe prey to doubt, political correctness, pseudo-democratic populism, communication that often replaces action, he brilliantly uses the theatre and modern technology means to make it an agora, that very core of democracy. Putting the spectator in the theatre or on the stage, he invites us to look in another way at this epic, living, exalting theatre that has us hear the voices of the past to enlighten the present and, perhaps, the future.
Distribution
mise en scène: Ivo van Hove
avec: Barry Atsma, Jacob Derwig, Renée Fokker, Fred Goessens, Janni Goslinga, Marieke Heebink, Fedja van Huêt, Hans Kesting, Hugo Koolschijn, Hadewych Minis, Chris Nietvelt, Frieda Pittoors, Alwin Pulinckx, Eelco Smits, Karina Smulders musiciens Ward Deketelaere, Yves Goemaere, Hannes Nieuwlaet, Christiaan Saris, Mattijs Vanderleen
traduction: Tom Kleijn
dramaturgie: Bart Van den Eynde, Jan Peter Gerrits, Alexander Schreuder
musique: Eric Sleichim
costumes Lies van Assche
scénographie et lumières: Jan Versweyveld
vidéos: Tal Yarden
production: Toneelgroep Amsterdam
Production
coproduction: Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Bl!ndman (Bruxelles), La Monnaie (Bruxelles), Holland Festival (Amsterdam), Kaaitheater (Bruxelles), Muziektheater Transparant (Anvers)
avec le soutien: de l'Ambassade du Royaume des Pays-bas à Paris, du Fonds néerlandais des arts de la scène et du Theater Instituut Nederland
navette au départ d'Avignon