Venus & Adonis

Shakespeare already wrote so sharply in 1593 about something that still feels painfully familiar today. Venus & Adonis is not a romantic love story, but a precise dissection of everything we mistake for love: desire, possessiveness, jealousy, pride, rejection... We witness the all too familiar clash between someone completely ready for love, and someone who shuts themselves off. Will Venus learn that what she's looking for isn't actually love at all?

What if your heart is too big for this world?

Director Agnes Kumpina stays close to Shakespeare's original poem Venus & Adonis, his very first publication, in a new, accessible translation. The epic poem relentlessly exposes every shadow side of what we call love: the wanting to possess, the persuading, the forcing, the inability to accept a "no". How can it be that Venus, the woman who has it all, becomes so entangled in the pursuit of this ego-driven love? And how long can she keep trying before it becomes humiliating? She tries to seduce Adonis in every possible way, until the moment instinct and impulse take over, and she makes a terrible choice.

But this Venus & Adonis doesn't end there. Director Agnes Kumpina does believe that love without shadow exists. The train wreck that is the "love" between Venus and Adonis is transformed by Kumpina into something greater. Consider this performance an attempt to bring that real, pure love to the stage.