Workshop – “A Helvetic Henry?”

Swiss Stage Bards aims to develop translations and stagings of Shakespeare’s plays which locate the plays of this great European cultural icon firmly in today’s Switzerland.  Characters speak French, High German, various dialects of Swiss German, Italian, Rumantsch, as well as English, and even Patois Gruyérien.  We aim to use Swiss cultural and linguistic riches to shed light both on Shakespeare as a European Bard and on the ideal and reality of Switzerland as a modern, multilingual nation.  We recognize that few in the audience will understand every word of our productions; the same is perhaps true of the average audience member of Shakespeare’s English today.  We explore the nature of communication in such a situation, particularly focusing on humour.

In this workshop, through a combination of live performance and film with discussion, we will encourage the audience to explore its experiences of Shakespeare, comedy, and the ways in which language and languages can both include and exclude.