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THEATRE

Stockholm giveaway: Shakespeare in the park

Sigh no more, ladies (and gents), sigh no more... Now is your chance to see a Shakespeare comedy in the summer at a glorious Stockholm palace.

Stockholm giveaway: Shakespeare in the park
Photo: Stockholm English Speaking Theatre (SEST)

Yes, indeed. The Stockholm English Speaking Theatre (SEST) is celebrating William Shakespeare's 450th birthday this year by presenting one of his jolliest plays: Much Ado About Nothing.

Bring along your chairs and blankets to the fragrant lemon groves of Sicily – or rather, Rosendals Wärdshus on Djurgården. But that's close enough, right?

"Visitors can expect Sicily in the late 50s, olive groves, flamboyant costumes, swords, singing, and dancing," SEST co-founder and actor Kristina Leon told The Local. 

Leon said that the company chose Much Ado About Nothing because it blends humour with serious issues like honour, and presents issues that people can still relate to today.

The show will be performed on land belonging to the Swedish Royal Court – which makes it all the more believable, not to mention fun.

"We spoke to the people managing the royal land, and they were very happy to hear from us," Leon said. "They were eager to have theatre in English. And of course places like Drottningholm and Rosendal are amazing and gorgeous. Especially for tourists, since they are one of our main audiences, it's perfect."  


Do you want to see Shakespeare here at Drottningholm? Of course you do. Photo: Imagebank Sweden/Melker Dahlstrand

The show premieres on July 11th at Parkteatern on Djurgården. Shows will be held at Drottningholm Palace from July 17th to 19th, and thereafter performances will be held at Rosendals Wärdshus on Djurgården. Tickets and all show times can be found here. Tickets are 250 kronor for adults, and free for children under 12.

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to one of the shows, simply like our Facebook page and comment with the name of any character from any Shakespeare play ever. But there's a catch, it has to be one that's not already been mentioned. Good luck. 

The contest is now closed, thanks for participating.

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PARIS

Top Paris theatre reopens as Covid occupy movement ends

French actors, stage technicians and other members of the performing arts ended a more-than-two-month occupation of the famous Odéon theatre in Paris on Sunday, allowing the show to go on after this week's easing of Covid-19 curbs.

Top Paris theatre reopens as Covid occupy movement ends
A picture taken on January 26, 2011 in Paris shows the facade of the Odéon theatre. LOIC VENANCE / AFP

The protesters took down the banners they had slung across the facade of the venue in the Left Bank as they left at dawn, leaving just one inscribed “See you soon”.

“We’re reopening!,” theatre director Stéphane Braunschweig exclaimed on the venue’s website, adding that it was “a relief and a great joy to be able to finally celebrate the reunion of the artists with the public.”

The Odéon, one of France’s six national theatres, was one of around 100 venues that were occupied in recent weeks by people working in arts and entertainment.

The protesters are demanding that the government extend a special Covid relief programme for “intermittents” — performers, musicians, technicians and other people who live from contract to contract in arts and entertainment.

READ ALSO: Protesters occupy French theatres to demand an end to closure of cultural spaces

With theatres shut since October due to the pandemic, the occupations had gone largely unnoticed by the general public until this week when cultural venues were finally cleared to reopen.

The Odéon, which was inaugurated by Marie-Antoinette in 1782, had planned to mark the reopening in style, by staging Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece “The Glass Menagerie”, with cinema star Isabelle Huppert as a former southern belle mourning the comforts of her youth.

But the protests scuppered the first five performances, with management saying the venue was blocked — a claim the protesters denied.

“What we wanted was for it (the performance) to go ahead, along with an occupation allowing us to speak out and hang our banners. We don’t want to stop the show,” Denis Gravouil, head of the performing arts chapter of the militant CGT union, said on Sunday.

Two other major theatres — the Colline theatre in eastern Paris and the National Theatre of Strasbourg — have also been affected by the protests.
 
France has one of the world’s most generous support systems for self-employed people in the arts and media, providing unemployment benefit to those who can prove they have worked at least 507 hours over the past 12 months.

But with venues closed for nearly seven months, and strict capacity limits imposed on those that reopened this week, the “intermittents” complained they could not make up their hours.

The government had already extended a year-long deadline for them to return to work by four months.

The “intermittents” are pushing for a year-long extension instead.

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