William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
The Shakespeare Company at the Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz is staging Shakespeare’s „Julius Caesar”, which is easily the most popular of the political dramas by the English playwright. Giovanni Netzer, director in residence, stages the timeless work as a deadly game revolving around cravings for recognition and power and human desolation. Opening night is 10 December 2010.
On 21 September 1599 the Swiss traveller T. Platter went to see a performance of Shakespeare’s „Julius Caesar“ and noted in his diary that he witnessed the tragedy of the first Emperor Julio Cesare with about fifteen actors in a straw-covered theatre and that the experience was “a pleasant one”. The Globe Theatre the travelling Swiss referred to had been completed shortly before his visit: it is even possible that Shakespeare wrote the play for the opening of the Globe. The historical importance of the protagonist would seem to fit well with the representative impact attached to the opening of a theatre.
The plot
Caesar returns to Rome as a victorious military leader, his supporters planning to elect him Emperor. But there is resistance among the senators: Brutus, one of Caesar’s friends, wants to prevent a dictatorship and plots the murder of Caesar. When Caesar proceeds to the Senate, despite the premonitions of his wife Calphurnia, he is killed by Brutus and the other conspirators. Brutus gives a speech in the Forum in which he defends his action and is hailed by the people present. But then Mark Antony rises to speak and with his skilful rhetoric manages to turn the people against Brutus. The conspirators make their escape and are finally defeated at the Battle of Philippi. Brutus throws himself on his sword to prevent being paraded in Rome as a captive. Henceforth a triumvirate composed of Mark Antony, Octavius and Lepidus governs the Roman Empire.
Statesman with many weaknesses
The character of Julius Caesar has fascinated politicians of all periods, but not only them: Caesar has triggered a huge dramatic response giving rise to a host of interpretations dealing with the Roman commander, especially in the Renaissance. Shakespeare, however, bases his work on much older sources, namely on the biographies of the Greek poet Plutarch who lived in the first century AD and who composed critical portraits of the senators living at the time of Caesar. Shakespeare distills the characters, enhances their contradictions and entangles them in a dense, fatal web where the struggle for power and influence as well as the questioning of ideologies and human desolation are intertwined. For Shakespeare, Caesar is a great statesman whose strengths match his blatant weaknesses; Brutus, Caesar’s friend and murderer, is a stoical thinker with lyrical power; Antony is portrayed as an opportunist whose deep attachment to Caesar becomes more and more obvious. These ambivalent characters forge the play and clearly demonstrate the ambivalence of the subject to the audience.
An arena of political obsession
The Zuoz version, created by Giovanni Netzer, is staged in an arena: the struggle for power in Caesar’s Rome takes place in a central space surrounded by the rows of spectators. Without having been asked, the audience sits amongst the plebeians, the ordinary people who can be manipulated so easily, first cheering Brutus uncritically, then chasing him to his death with outbreaks of hatred and violence. The enclosed space in the midst of people becomes a symbol – it is coronation hall and killing field, battlefield and a tent for the dying. Eventually, all is a public spectacle and Caesar’s life and death sometimes remind us of the biography of a Hollywood actor pursued by the media.
Speaking of the Globe
It is worthwhile taking a look the temporary Cala Theatre in the former indoor pool – as long as it still exists. Because it will soon be replaced by a new, permanent and ambitious theatre. Ursula Sommer, Head of the Globe Theatre project, is optimistic: construction of the Zuoz Globe should start in March 2011, the opening is planned for 9 December 2011- with a Shakespeare play, naturally.
CAESAR in the press: