GDANSK, Poland: A new Elizabethan-style theatre opened in Gdansk last week on the site of a building that showed Shakespeare’s plays during his lifetime in the Baltic Sea city.
Celebrating its ties with the English playwright, the Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre hosted actors on its opening night from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, who are putting on “Hamlet” there this week.
Revolving platforms and 56 lifts allow the theatre to change from an Elizabethan stage, to a box-set or into a central theatre-in-the-round, and its 90-tonne roof can open or shut in three minutes. Shows are viewed from a three-storey gallery.
The theatre, built with help of EU funds, stands where the Fencing School — modelled on London’s Fortune Playhouse — stood more than 400 years ago and hosted English troupes, performing Shakespeare’s plays just a few years after the London premieres.
Viewed by a capacity, 680-strong audience inside the theatre, and relayed via a video screen to thousands more outside, the opening show on Friday was a performance of theatrical fencing by The Royal Drama School RESAD from Madrid and a display by Poland’s MIRA-ART Acrobats.
“A memorable day,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the audience, thanking the theatre’s Managing Director Jerzy Limon for his “huge faith and determination” in giving life to “this theatre impressing us all with its appearance, functionality, architecture and modernity”.
In the heart of Gdansk’s Old City, meticulously rebuilt after widespread bomb damage during World War Two, the theatre’s modern exterior nevertheless evokes the Gothic architecture of Gdansk’s many historic brick-built churches. Italian architect Renato Rizzi’s choice of Belgian black bricks to cover the whole exterior, is in stark contrast to the galleried wooden auditorium and stone-clad foyer. “Black like a black dress or a black suit, emphasising the elegance of art,” Limon told journalists during a guided tour before the
opening show. REUTERS
