Romeo and Juliet

Our conference theme “Romeo and Juliet” takes on unexpected topicality. In the fifth act, Friar John and his brother in Mantua are suspected of being in a house where the infectious plague is raging and are locked up there, preventing them from delivering the letters to Romeo in which Friar Laurence informs him of Juliet’s condition, which is only apparently dead. The consequences of this forced quarantine are, as we know, fatal for the lovers.

With Romeo and Juliet, however, we are also taking up the tradition of the autumn conferences, which are dedicated to an intensive examination of a selected play by Shakespeare. At the same time, the theme ties in very well with that of our originally planned spring conference in Bochum, Shakespeare and Dance. To begin with, Julia Bührle from Oxford will talk about “Romeo and Juliet as a ballet”. The evening will be characterised by a musical soirée in which the singer Carolanne Wright and the guitarist Patrick Pagels will perform works on the conference theme.

The next day begins with a botanical tour by our member Stephan Schneckenburger, the director and scientific director of the Darmstadt Botanical Garden, who many of you already remember vividly from his exhibition on “Shakespeare’s Plants” and his introduction to our Bochum conference on Shakespeare’s Green Worlds in 2016.

Saturday’s lectures will be devoted to a variety of original approaches to interpreting our play. Russell Jackson from Stratford-upon-Avon, the long-standing literary advisor to our Honorary President Sir Kenneth Brannagh, who has, among other things, co-supervised his famous film productions, will address the media and performative dimensions of the play in his paper on “Romeo and Juliet in performance: energy, pace and the Mercutio factor”. Angelika Zirker from Tübingen will speak as part of a new research project on the “Aesthetics of collaborative authorship in Romeo and Juliet“, and the Jena-based German scholar Alice Stasková will consider the drama in the light of its immense impact on German classicism, in particular Schiller and Kleist.

Theatre scholar Monika Woitas (Ruhr University Bochum) and Julia Bührle will take part in the panel discussion.

After the presentation of this year’s Martin Lehnert Prize, the Weimar part of the conference will end at around 17:00. In addition, you will be able to follow two further programme items from your desk at home on Sunday. In the “Shakespeare and School” forum, Maria Marcsek-Fuchs from the TU Braunschweig will give current insights into the possibilities of using Romeo and Juliet in creative online lessons, and in the Shakespeare seminar, young academics will present and discuss their contributions. Both parts of the programme will be offered via an internet platform. The corresponding accesses will be sent to all registered participants in good time. We ask all conference participants, whether live or online, to register. As a courtesy on the part of our organisation, we would like to waive the conference fees for one time only in these difficult times.

Here you can download the Programme and the president’s invitation.