ROMEO AND IMPOSSIBLE LOVE

Shakespeare’s famous tragedy about Romeo and Juliet and their tragic love affair takes place in Verona of the Renaissance. The families of the young lovers are in a violent conflict against each other. But the story could also have taken place between a boy and a girl from different sides of the civil war in Syria, or between two young men with different ethnic or religious background at a refugee center in Norway. It could have taken place between a third generation Pakistani immigrant boy and an ethnic Norwegian girl, or between two girls or two boys with a religious background forbidding same sex marriage in Norway today.

The tragic story about impossible love could also have taken place between a young boy and an older woman, or between a teacher and a student. Our focus on sexualized assaults based on power has to a large extent criminalized asymmetric relations and love.

In the performance two young actors try to play “Romeo and Juliet” but they constantly interrupt the story with real stories of impossible love from our own time.