Romeo & Julia was staged at the festival from August 11th to 14th. The Young Directors Project, which this year saw its twelfth edition, promotes the work of promising young theatre directors. The project is generously supported by Montblanc. As well as providing sponsorship, Montblanc donates a €10,000 monetary prize along with a Montblanc Mozart pen designed exclusively for the occasion. The Montblanc YDP Award was presented in Salzburg this morning.
From the jury’s report:
“The fact that love and hatred not only coexist within a relationship, but can both be active within one movement, one glance, one word – that they even need each other, that the most powerful of all feelings are dependent on each other when two people want to survive in a world of horror – this is the insight the Iraqi-Belgian director Mokhallad Rasem tries to introduce us to. He calls his piece Romeo and Juliet. Not that we understood the title immediately – but then not everything that is “immediately apparent” is satisfying. The play tells that part of the story which Shakespeare avoided. We think that shows remarkable ambition!”
“Sometimes we read a book or listen to a piece of music, look at a painting or watch a play, and suddenly we feel the gaze of the author, the composer, the painter, the director fall directly upon us – and let me correct that: fall directly upon me. Not on the person next to me. On me. Those are magical moments. That is what only art can accomplish. Afterwards, we say: the work “touched” us. We are embarrassed and use this phrase to render the pain we have suffered harmless.
The piece the jury has chosen contains such moments. It hurts us to suddenly recognise that of all people, we love that person most whom we also hate the most. We want to cry and rejoice. And are – touched.”
