Theatre Ensemble "Shakespeare Frankfurt" at IUGTE Conference
International Conference "Theatre Between Tradition and Contemporaneity"
Theatre - Dance - Music - Visual & Multimedia Art - Arts Administration - Performing Arts Training - Stage Design & Technology
Shakespeare: Losing the stage and finding the connectionPerformance and discussion by theatre ensemble "Shakespeare Frankfurt" presented by PJ Escobio, Sara Jones, Varvara Pomoni, Jim Phetterplace Jr. (Frankfurt, Germany).
PJ Escobio is directing Huck Finn for the English Theatre Frankfurt for their TYA production of the 2019-20 season. As Artistic Director of Shakespeare Frankfurt, he has directed Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, as well as Ibsen's An Enemy of the People and will do The Comedy of Errors in summer 2020. As Director in residence at The LOFT he directed The Tempest, Shakespeare in the Garden: Hortus Inclusus, Where, and Grounded by George Brandt. For 10 years he was the Artistic Director of Shakespeare Anyone? with whom he played over 30 different roles as well as produced and/or directed 18 different versions of the project. He cast and directed Undergraduate Playwriting Thesis projects at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts from 2007-2012. He was the Project Coordinator and Associate Artistic Director of WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory from 2006-2012.
Professionally trained, Sara Jones has played roles from Shakespeare to Arthur Miller and Henrik Ibsen, working in theatres across the world from Flat Earth Theatre Boston to Shakespeare Frankfurt and The English Theatre in Frankfurt, Germany. Recent roles include Desdemona in Othello, Witch in MacBeth, Mayor Stockman in An Enemy of the People and Olivia in Twelfth Night. Sara’s most notable performances were The Pilot in George Brandt’s one woman Tour de Force, Grounded, Veronica in the Tony Award winning play God of Carnage, Ann Deever in All My Sons and Mademoiselle de Tourvel in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Sara has a B.A. in Theatre from Denison University in Ohio, has trained with the Young Actors Workshop at the Muny Student Theater in St Louis, MO and Stage Combat with Mathias Kunzler in Frankfurt, Germany. Sara looks forward to what the future brings and hoping at some point it includes playing her dream roles of Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Miss Julie in August Strindberg’s Miss Julie.
Jim Phetterplace Jr. in the last three years has directed Our Country’s Good and Loot for FEST e.V. and Cinderella for the English Theatre Frankfurt, appeared on the FEST stage, including Felice in William’s The Two-Character Play and Case in The Detainee, in two short German films Fremdkörperkredit and Nimmerlandsverräter, performed a public reading of selected Shakespeare works for the choir Ars Antiqua, and appeared in Lost Highway for Oper Frankfurt. His credits with Shakespeare Frankfurt include the King and Stefano in The Tempest, Orsino in Twelfth Night, Rodrigo in Othello and most recently Macduff in Macbeth.
He has a B.A. in Acting and Directing for the Stage from Illinois Wesleyan University.
Shakespeare Frankfurt produces classical stories but our focus is accessibility for modern audiences as well as non-traditional acting spaces. We achieve this in a variety of ways, such as non- traditional casting, switching gender roles, and focusing on modern archetypes that resonate with todays audiences.
Our presentation will contain 4 scenes from Shakespeare’s work each in a different location and highlighting aspects of our modern world.
For the last part of the presentation we will move indoors to a room where there will be an open forum on our work as well as others experiences and approaches to Shakespeare’s text today.
Organized by IUGTE in collaboration with "ArtUniverse" and New International Performing Arts Institute
PRESENTATION OVERVIEW
Varvara Pomoni comes from Athens, Greece. Her training includes theatre improvisation, Meisner Technique and several acting, voice and stage combat courses at Stage & Voice Coaching in Frankfurt. She has attended a Shakespeare's Language masterclass at Rose Bruford and a clown workshop at RADA in the UK. Recently, she trained on Shakespeare's text with Michael Corbidge (RSC). In Frankfurt, she has directed the original play TCC-416 by PJ Escobio and she is an ensemble member of the silent clown piece WHERE. She has performed in productions of Our Country’s Good (Duckling) and And Then There Were None (Vera Claythorne) and with Shakespeare Frankfurt, she has played in Twelfth Night (Maria), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Hippolyta & Fairies), An Enemy of the People (Aslaksen), Othello (Emilia) and Macbeth (Lady Macbeth).
