Adena Jacobs will direct Shakespeare’s gory Titus Andronicus for Bell Shakespeare in 2019. The production will be Jacobs’ company debut and the first time that Bell has tackled the early play in its conventional form – it teamed up with Queensland Theatre in 2008 for an adaptation of Titus by Heiner Müller. Jane Montgomery Griffiths, who has worked with Jacobs in the past, is slated to play the title role. The play tells the story of a Roman general whose family becomes the victim of terrible vengeance when he refuses to perform an act of clemency.

Adena Jacobs. Photo © Graham Denholm 

“Titus  Andronicus is about a society unable to process its trauma. A society so dehumanised that it derives pleasure through bodily punishment and creates a spectacle of its victims and perpetrators,” Jacobs said. “Titus Andronicus is a nightmare – a grotesque examination of reciprocal violence and histories doomed to repeat themselves.”

“We are thrilled to welcome Adena to the company, and I look forward to experiencing her reimagining of Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy,” Bell Shakespeare’s Artistic Director Peter Evans said. “This is a challenging play, where Shakespeare delves into some of the most unimaginable...