Romeo and Juliet

The remarkable thing about the production of Romeo and Juliet by director Christian Georg Fuchs is that it dispenses with words, and is not a ballet, but musical theatre with puppets.

The piece begins seconds before the tragic ending: Juliet awakes from her deathly sleep in the tomb, and in a half-trance relives the story of her love for Romeo. She also experiences events she knew nothing of before. The happiness and the fate of the lovers are shown in dreamlike images to the music of Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.

Karoline Vogel as Juliet interacts with marionettes, rod-puppets, and mixedmethod manipulated puppets. Sometimes she plays with them, sometimes they with her. She has to watch helplessly while families murder each other, or she lives through again the most wonderful moments with the man of her dreams. A great variety of angles on a strong basic idea throws unexpected new light on the classic love-story.

The production was honoured with the Acting-Animation Creativity Award of the 9th International Puppet Festival LUTKE 2008 in Ljubljana / Slovenia and it achieved 2nd place in the category Audience Award.

»There was never so much Julia, it‘s not possible to establish a more subjective
and empathic perspective on this story.« (Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, Andreas Hillger, 8th October 2007)

With music from Sergei Prokofievs »Romeo and Juliet«, ballet in four acts, op. 64, Boston Symphony Orchestra / Seiji Ozawa