Billy´s Violence - a tragedy in ten chapters

“Quentin Tarantino is a choirboy in comparison to the sheer brutality evoked by Shakespeare.”

- Director Jan Lauwers

Shakespeare is the most read and performed writer the world has ever known. And yet many of The Bard’s plays are virtually unperformable due to their violence, gruesomeness, racism and misogyny. A fierce brutality, which Shakespeare used to lure the audience into his theater and away from the streets of London, which was then filled with executions, dogfights, the burning of women and more violence.

In Billy's Violence ten of Shakespeare’s classics are gently rewritten into violently loving and intimate dialogues in which the woman is the central focus point, and the narratives are stripped of any historical reference or anecdotal content. Romeo & Juliet, King Lear and Othello are three of the ten tragedies that Needcompany explores to find out how we view violence as an element of entertainment today

Billy's Violence is presented in collaboration with Musikhuset Aarhus.