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{ ABOUT }
Co-production of the Urban Theater and the Globe Berlin in summer 2025
Charlottenburg’s Globe Berlin is presenting genuine popular theatre in a unique open-air ambience from 20 June to 13 September 2025
Under the performance theme ‘Power & Powerlessness', the Globe Berlin will be opening its 2025 summer season on 20 June with the premiere of a very special theatre project: "War.Powers.Peace (?)". In a co-production of the Urban Theater and the Globe Berlin, actors from Russia, Ukraine and Germany will be performing a play based on Shakespeare’s "Henry V", complemented by texts from Niccolò Machiavelli and Hannah Arendt as a contribution to peace and a common understanding among peoples.
In Natalia Lapina’s production, Shakespeare’s historical original comes across as a contemporary political drama, depicting in real time how King Henry V, under intense domestic pressure, manages to get his advisors, the army, and ultimately an entire nation to enter into war. Despite its timelessly modern parallels to current world politics, the performance offers no easy answers, instead confronting the audience with existential questions, such as:
Under the performance theme ‘Power & Powerlessness', the Globe Berlin will be opening its 2025 summer season on 20 June with the premiere of a very special theatre project: "War.Powers.Peace (?)". In a co-production of the Urban Theater and the Globe Berlin, actors from Russia, Ukraine and Germany will be performing a play based on Shakespeare’s "Henry V", complemented by texts from Niccolò Machiavelli and Hannah Arendt as a contribution to peace and a common understanding among peoples.
In Natalia Lapina’s production, Shakespeare’s historical original comes across as a contemporary political drama, depicting in real time how King Henry V, under intense domestic pressure, manages to get his advisors, the army, and ultimately an entire nation to enter into war. Despite its timelessly modern parallels to current world politics, the performance offers no easy answers, instead confronting the audience with existential questions, such as:
What motivates a ruler to make people hate, send soldiers into battle, or force a people to fight?
Do we have the power to end a war and bring about peace?
What means of manipulation, rhetoric and demagogy are used to turn war into a political tool – and what price does the civilian population pay in any case, irrespective of what side it feels it belongs to?
The piece not only uses Shakespeare’s device of having a Chorus comment on the dramatic events and political developments, but also brings in historical figures such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Hannah Arendt, offering a nuanced analysis of the still highly relevant questions of power and powerlessness.
The audience is invited – indeed encouraged – to draw its own conclusions about possible parallels with present-day reality; yet it may find that positions taken in life shift, just as they do on stage.
{ CAST }
Ilya Khodyrev
Olha Kryvosheieva
Oleksandr Kryvosheiev
Illia Rudakov
Seva Kovalenko
Henning Bormann
Tim Otto Göbel
Anselm Lipgens
Michael Schröder
Saskia von Winterfeld
{ ARTISTIC DIRECTOR }
Christian Leonard
{ Dramaturgy }
NATALIA SKOROKHOD
{ SET DESIGNER }
Arina Slobodyanik
{ MUSIC }
Roman Stolyar
{ LIGHT DESIGNER }
TINA KOVALSKI
{ DIRECTOR }
Natalia Lapina
{ PRODUCER }
Witalij Schmidt
World premiere
on June 20, 2025 at the Globe Berlin Open Air Stage
Additional shows at 7:30 PM
June 21 / July 17, 18 & 19 / August 29 & 30, 2025
In a new adaptation by the translator collective ConTra – Wiebke Acton, Yvonne Jäckel & Christian Leonard
PARTNERS
