The signature performance of Berlin’s landmark Schaubühne theater, Hamlet features only six actors, playing twenty characters, constantly changing roles in a play which, according to the German director, “remains today a valid analysis of the intellectual dilemma between complex thought and political action.”

Lars Eidinger as Hamlet (Image from schaubuehne.de)

But even if you think you have seen it all at different theaters across the world, Ostermeier’s Hamlet is yet full of surprises, both pleasant and less so.

Apart from Hamlet, there will be two other German performances on the Territory menu. “Hell on Earth” from Buenos Aires-born experimental director, Constanza Macras who studied dance in Amsterdam, New York and Berlin; and Karl Marx/ Das Kapital: Erster Band from Rimini Protokoll artistic trio.

This edition of the festival puts an emphasis on Berlin. The organizers – some of Russia’s best-known artists among them – film and theater director Kirill Serebrennikov, actress and founder of the “Give a Life” charity foundation, Chulpan Khamatova, have explained that it is “a city which, in the 20th Century, has been linked to tragedies and hopes, both cultural and social. Berlin is also a young city, hungry for renewal.”

Valeria Paikova, RT