HMT Rostock: Was ihr wollt – Komödie von William Shakespeare

In the organizer's words:

Shakespeare's "What You Will" - a comedy about love, identity and dancing on thin ice

What is love? A trick? A deception? Or simply a game? In "What You Will", William Shakespeare's dazzling comedy of mistaken identity, role models, truths and affects become blurred. Who loves whom and why? Who is playing, who is serious? And what remains of the great feeling when the curtain falls?

The third-year drama students at the Rostock University of Music and Drama, directed by Frank Siebenschuh, question the play's emotional honesty. Between desire and assertion, intoxication and control, the production explores a field of tension: what role does play play in love and love in play? What happens to the truth when it is approached playfully?

In a present in which relationships often move between emoji talk, self-presentation and alienation, "Was ihr wollt" hits a nerve. The characters on stage stagger through illusory identities, change clothes and (gender) roles and open up completely new possibilities for action. The production celebrates trickery, deception and forgery as detours to the truth. In doing so, it opens up a space in which complexity and ambivalence shine rather than the unambiguous.

With: Margherita Campostrini, Jasper Adam Friedrich, Luca Maret Kern, Elisabeth Kleewein, Julia Krukow, Louis Kuballa, Anna Menzel, Carl Peter Radestock. Stage & costumes: Cara Golenhofen.