Shylock (2009)

Stepping in and out of character while trolling around an elegant Dutch theater augmented by life-sized video projections of a modern production of The Merchant of Venice, actor Cahit Ölmez is decidedly "not just talking about plays and acting." Addressing us, his audience, Ölmez excavates Tubal, a minor but freighted Shakespearean creation, the only friend of Merchant's notorious Semitic villain, Shylock. Tubal grants Ölmez fresh access to Shylock, and the scars of the Elizabethan era's rampant anti-Semitism. And though Shakespeare may never have known a Jew, Shylock's tragic dimension has given rise to an unsettling ambiguity winding through centuries of theatrical history to this moment: a provocative meta-theatrical venture seeking nothing less than the chance to set Shylock free.