It has taken Farnaz Arbabi just over 20 years to make her debut as a Shakespeare director and blank verse dramatist with "Så tuktas en argbigga" at Dramaten in Stockholm.
I have written about the play in new blank verse. It has been incredibly fun, very inspiring and enjoyable, she says and tells that she often happened to text in blank verse during the writing process.
Even though the play is not set in the present, she has been inspired by contemporary phenomena such as "soft girls" (mild girls) and "tradwifes" (traditional wives) to reinforce a 16th-century theme with strong contemporary relevance. Farnaz Arbabi refers to the Youth Barometer's latest measurement, which shows that a majority of young people today appreciate traditional gender roles, she says.
The entire "tradwife" trend is a clear movement backwards to a time when women devoted themselves to the home, children and family, and men worked and provided.
Feminist boy with lute
The basic conflict is the same as in the original: All suitors want Bianca, the sweet and nice one who, according to the family's rules, cannot get married until her angry older sister, Katarina - or "Kitty" as she is called - has done so. The suitors, including "the young feminist boy" Lucentio (with lute), therefore do their best to help and find Petruccio.
In the original, he subjects his future wife to pure torture, notes Farnaz Arbabi, who does not want to reveal exactly what happens in her production. But the final monologue, where Kitty talks about submitting to the man, becoming obedient and happy, is not completely removed.
As a director, one has to take a stand on that, and when I understood how I would use it, it gave the whole thing its form.
Today's expectations
Three clowns will undergo psychoanalysis while dancers from the Ballet Academy comment on the many expectations that today's young women have to live up to.
Farnaz Arbabi was drawn to a play about a woman who breaks against society's rules for how a woman should be.
It is also impossible to know what Shakespeare thought. The play was perhaps a way to highlight women's vulnerability? I also thought it was exciting how everyone gets so provoked by a woman who challenges the structure, that an entire society needs to punish and discipline her.
By: William Shakespeare, with partially new text in blank verse by director Farnaz Arbabi (artistic director of Unga Klara together with Gustav Deinoff).
Where: Dramaten in Stockholm.
When: Premiere 5/9.
With: Sara Shirpey (SVT's "Taelgia" among others) plays Kitty, Maia Hansson Bergqvist plays the role of Bianca and David Book plays Petruccio. Kristina Törnqvist plays an economically independent and sexually liberated widow in a leopard dress.
