"What's so great about Shakespeare?"
by Natalie Lüthi-Peterson

This is the 36th year in which we have performed one of Shakespeare's plays in the Ecole. That seems like a long time, but his plays have been performed for 400 years and all over the world. Why is this? As one of my Chinese students put it, "What's so great about Shakespeare?" One thing that's great is certainly his language. Shakespeare can say things more beautifully than anyone else. But the language is difficult. It is antiquated, intricate, poetic. it requires much effort to understand it. Besides, most of the performances around the world are in different languages and, as we know, something is always lost in translation. It can't be just the language. Perhaps it is the characters he created. He invented people that we can't forget. They are alive for us. They become friends and acquaintances whom we look forward to seeing again. And we share our acquaintance with Falstaff and Lear, Titania and Rosalind with people all over the earth. Another reason we love Shakespeare is his skill at describing human situations that are so familiar to us that they make us say to ourselves, "Yes! That's just the way I felt," or "That's just the way people I know behave." Some may be small, insignificant or laughable human predicaments. Others are grave and have tragic consequences. At times we feel sure that in the last 400 years we have made great progress: we are no longer so primitive; civilization has made us better human beings. Shakespeare reminds us that we are still no angels.

"Romeo and Juliet" portrays the ancient situation of two groups of people who hate each other on principle, kill each other on principle, and perpetuate the vicious cycle of vengeance on principle. Because a person belongs to the other group he or she is automatically my enemy. The enmity may be based on race, religion or cultural differences. Such conflicts are still with us today. And we don't have to go to Africa, the Middle East or the Subcontinent to look for examples; we have them right here in Europe, right here in Switzerland, where people set fire to refugee hostels.

In our production of "Romeo and Juliet" we have chosen to suggest through the costumes that the Capulets and Montagues are members of two different cultures; we have done this as a reminder to ourselves and to our audiences that this kind of murderous hatred is not just taking place long ago in Shakespeare's Verona - it is very much a part of life today. In Shakespeare's day they killed each other with swords. In our production they use bare hands or knives. In the real world automatic weapons are even more effective. and make a healthy profit for the arms industry. If we don't watch out, nuclear weapons will be used in future.