Contemporary Shakespeares on Festival Stages: Empathy and Futurity in Poland and Hungary

Abstract: This article explores “contemporariness” at European international Shakespeare Festivals. It begins by outlining the “disjunctions” and “anachronisms” of festival contexts, which combine highly contemporary productions with deeply commemorative practices. Through their unique temporality (“Festival Time”), festivals allow us to grasp our present moment from a crucial critical distance. To test the limits of this theory, this article considers two productions hosted on festival stages in recent years: Romeo i Julia , a Polish 3D water musical hosted by the Festiwal Szekspirowski in Gdańsk, Poland (2018), and Keresztvíz , a Hungarian production responding to the refugee crisis presented in Gyula, Hungary (2019). Situating these productions in their social, political, and climatic contexts, the article proposes that they use Shakespeare to cast what Giorgio Agamben might call an “untimely” gaze on contemporary concerns, and encourage audiences to look, with hope, towards a better future.