Die Zähmung der Widerspenstigen

In the organizer's words:

Bianca already has a few suitors and is ready for her wedding. However, she cannot be married until someone chooses her sister. Katharina, on the other hand, is seen as the projection screen for all things unruly, which is why she doesn't "go" so well on the marriage market. So Bianca has to be patient and wait until it is her turn and the seemingly impossible task of finding someone for her sister has been solved.

Today, it may no longer be the fathers who want to marry off their daughters, but the search for the perfect match, the wife for the farmer or the Bachelorette still exists. Love is blind and millions watch as couples find each other on camera. Director Pia Richter therefore transposes Shakespeare's material into a dating show and questions the omnipresent social demand for couples: Marry or Move On.

The dating show hosts of PADUA ISLAND, who also happen to be a perfect couple themselves, welcome the candidates Hortensio, Gremio and Lucentio to PADUA ISLAND. All three have come to the island to win Bianca's heart. Hosts Nick and Vanessa now organize the mating of the sisters instead of their father. In order to be together with Bianca, the candidates have to come up with a solution for Katharina: they bring Petruchia into the game. She is first and foremost enthusiastic about the prize money and then, surprisingly, about Katharina.

Even the title The Taming of the Shrew triggers resistance - a feminist gag reflex. But what is it about the material that we are still talking about today? What structures lie beneath the pairing constraint? What is this perfect match? Who is taming whom here? Is it still about taming or rather about a rebelliousness that questions the couple market as it is and wants to fundamentally renew it?

Director Pia Richter is known for her strong settings. In past works, too, she has repeatedly questioned classics in terms of their contemporary themes, always finding new forks in the staging traditions to make room for contemporary discourse.