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Hmmm... that's weird, since Taymor produced Titus Andronicus on Broadway several years before taking it to film (with some of the same actors, too). Maybe that's it? Or maybe I'm just too lazy to look at the archives?
I don't particularly know of a company that sticks to Shakespeare and punks it up, but I do know lots of companies that have done interesting interpretations. Usually creating theatre like that requires a budget of European proportions, so those shows tend not to be created in the US - although they might tour there.
Robert Wilson has done Hamlet (but as a solo, speaking only Hamlet's lines, very successful) and Lear (unfortunate piece, that production, although nice design).
In France, Mnouchkine's Theatre du Soleil occasionally go after Shakespeare, but very much in French, and usually with more ancient than modern elements.
The Schaubühne's recent Macbeth in Berlin was pretty out there, although I don't remember the director's name.
Are you looking for a UK company to stalk? It's hard to recommend theatre because location is a difficulty. If you can find video archives of them anywhere, look for Strehler's Shakespeares. They're in Italian but somehow that doesn't make them less understandable. And Peter Brook made a film of Lear that is pretty damned amazing - it's not set in a modern period but it's the farthest you can get from Elizabethan as well, sort of a preChristian cave-man-ish existence.
Essentially, you'll just have to go with Paleface's answer, and go production by production. International festivals tend to be a good spot to find these kinds of productions, because most of the experimental theatre needs to tour in order to make any money at all; apparently there was a Hamlet production from Lithuania at the Harbourfront World Stage festival in Toronto last year that just blew everyone away - part of the set was made of ice which was shattered to pieces and melted every night.
Sorry I can't be any more help at the moment. But any company that also develops a style as specific as a la Titus is also in danger of getting stuck in a rut. After all, Taymor's also responsible for The Lion King. |
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