PERFORMANCE

Brooklyn Academy of Music
Shakespeare's Sonnets

Watch the video!

http://www.bam.org/theater/2014/shakespeares-sonnets

This was interesting!

The production was 2 hours and 45 minutes long.  I tell you that so you can see they had to entertain and hold the audience's attention for quite a while.

The sonnets were presented in German with English subtitles.  The costumes were stylized in the Shakespearean/Elizabethan period.  The music was progressive but never so atonal or unconventional that each song could not finish without resolution.  The staging was stark and minimalist with dramatic static and dynamic lighting, much like a ballet.  There was creativity everywhere in everything.

The director/creator was Robert Wilson who was born and raised in Waco, Texas and later studied business administration at the University of Texas in Austin.  He moved to Brooklyn in the early 1960s and has become an exceptional experimental theater stage director and playwright.  He is considered by many as the world's foremost avant-garde "theater artist."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/arts/robert-wilson-puts-shakespeares-sonnets-in-german-onstage.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A7%22%7D&_r=0

Please, go to the site above to see the New York Times review and a few pictures.  It's worth the visit.