For his first time directing a play at the Piccolo, Mario Martone has chosen Romeo and Juliet, the tragedy of the Veronese lovers that William Shakespeare wrote between 1594 and 1596 and set in the 1500s, in the midst of the Italian Renaissance. 
At the heart of the text is love, as sudden and intense as it can be between two adolescents, and rendered even stronger by adversity, with a driving urge to cancel any obstacle that stands in its way. It is a fable, with all the trimmings - magic potions, the trials of the two lovers, exile, the main character’s allies and enemies, the arranged marriage, duels... - but without the happy ending.
More than four centuries later, the themes of the work are significantly central to our daily lives: “We present a world ruled by senseless conflict, in which the very meaning of existence appears to lie in conflict - explains Martone -. A plague that renders the delivery of a letter impossible, while people continue to party. An innocent and rebellious love that suddenly emerges to escape all of this. A love illuminated exclusively by the light of the moon and of the dawn, with only the birds to witness it. Nature, ever present, awaiting a change that will never come”.
For his version of this extremely popular work that has been revisited for the theatre, cinema, opera and ballet, Martone has chosen a company of young actors accompanied by a number of theatrical professionals.