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Berenice is an academically rigorous, poetically sensitive and politically hard-hitting translation of Jean Racine's celebrated 17th century tragedy.
An adapted version of her text with movement was first staged in 2018 in a co-production between Theatre Forge and Exchange Theatre as part of Voila! Europe theatre festival under the title Becoming Berenice with original drum and bass music by Tomas Wolstenholme to sold-out audiences.
Unusually retaining the original French structure of rhyming 12-beat couplets, or Alexandrines, this modern English version seeks to highlight the Western colonial expansion in the Middle-East against which the story plays out, and of which we are arguably reaping the ever more violent repercussions.
This tale of one woman's emancipation in the face of star-crossed love is the first English translation of this European classic by a woman and a person of Middle-Eastern descent.
Jean Racine
Jean Racine (1639-99) is widely regarded as the greatest seventeenth-century Frenc tragedian, both observing and transcending the conventions of classical tragedy.
More by Jean Racine
Rosie Hilal
Translated by
Rosie Hilal grew up in Germany, France and Ecuador with Scottish, English and Turkish heritage and speaks five languages fluently. After studying Modern & Medieval languages at Pembroke college, Cambridge, she graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, working as an actor across stage and screen, including in TV and films for BBC, ITV, Apple TV & Netflix. Her translation of Jean Racine's 1671 original tragedy, Berenice, is her first full-length publication as a playwright.www.rosiehilal.com, @rosiehilal
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