J.C.

Dood Paard will present all its Shakespeare adaptations in one series. This will comprise three Roman tragedies on the violence of politics and one comedy on the violence of love:
- Titus (1997, from Titus Andronicus), the bloody first-born
- J.C. (1999, from Julius Caesar), masterpiece of demagogy
- Coriolanus (2001), a struggle with a young democracy
- Zomernachtliefde (2005, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream), exposure of true love

Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar and Coriolanus are all Roman tragedies by Shakespeare that deal with power, war, politics, violence and bloodshed, revenge and ambition. They will be staged by Dood Paard in the same order as Shakespeare wrote them.
   Zomernachtliefde is a new performance by Dood Paard and the Monk theatre company. This work takes Dood Paard in a new direction within Shakespeare’s work as a whole. In the hands of these two companies, the innocent fairytale becomes much more forbidding. 

These four Shakespearian plays have been translated and adapted by Kuno Bakker and Manja Topper. The translations are in a clear and concrete style. Although Shakespeare’s choice of words is strictly adhered to and his poetic strength is preserved, there has been no attempt to avoid the use of contemporary language. This has produced a translation that does justice to the directness and rawness of the original while also conveying Dood Paard’s view of that original.
   All the performances make use of powerful visual symbols: fluttering Heineken flags, buckets of blood, a deluge and Versace underpants. They are simultaneously ridiculous and moving, rhetorical and banal, and theatrical and cinematic.