THE 2017 York International Shakespeare Festival, more fashionably known as #YorkShakes17, opens on Monday for a week-long run.

The festival will include productions, talks, workshops and a dedicated Macbeth Day featuring expert talks and a pre-release screening of York director Kit Monkman's new green-screen feature film version of Macbeth on May 20 at the Holbeck Cinema, University of York, at 7.45pm.

Staged in a partnership between the University of York, York Theatre Royal and community theatre group Parrabbola, YorkShakes is a member of the European Shakespeare Festival Network.

Highlights will include a launch event for Hamlet’s Elsinore exhibition: the location in Denmark’s Kronborg Castle where Shakespeare’s Hamlet was set. Dr Anne Sophie Refskou, from the University of Surrey, and Lars Romann Engel, artistic director of Hamletscenen In Elsinore, will give an illustrated talk exploring the fascinating relationship between a fictional location and a real one on Monday from 6pm to 7pm at the university's Bowland Auditorium. Danish ambassador Claus Grube will be in attendance and the exhibition will run in the Berrick Saul Building Foyet from Tuesday to Friday.

Actor Paapa Essiedu will be in conversation with Professor Judith Buchanan, director of the university's Humanities Research Centre and co-director of YorkShakes, at the Bowland Auditorium on Thursday at 8pm. Essiedu, who played an electrifying Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2016 and will do so again on tour at Hull New Theatre next year, will discuss his roles, the media attention his casting garnered and experiences of live broadcast theatre.

Bloody, Bold and Resolute: Macbeth Day will see experts and practitioners come together to discuss creative responses to Macbeth with text, performance, music, politics and film on May 20 from 1.15pm to 6.15pm at the Bowland Auditorium.

Among the productions will be The Watermill Theatre's first visit to York Theatre Royal from their West Berkshire watermill to present actor-musician versions of Romeo + Juliet on Tuesday at 7.30pm, Wednesday at 2.30pm and Saturday at 7.30pm and Twelfth Night on Thursday and Friday at 7.30pm and Saturday at 2.30pm.

Both will be directed by The Watermill's new artistic director, Paul Hart. "Since being at The Watermill, I've wanted to continue our reputation for inventive, irreverent and imaginative storytelling. Twelfth Night and Romeo + Juliet seemed to me to be the perfect pairing of plays. They will be performed by a brilliant ensemble of actors in a way that is incredibly rich in music with a real focus on the language.

York Press:

Lauryn Redding as the Nurse in The Watermill Theare's Romeo + Juliet. Picture: Philip Tull

"This is our first time of being involved in the York International Shakespeare Festival and it's very exciting. I've been a great admirer of the work at the Theatre Royal for a long time under Damian Cruden's artistic directorship, and when we were looking at somewhere to open our 50th anniversary tour, we were delighted that York would be the first stop after The Watermill.

"It's always joyous to go to a fellow producing house. I'd seen quite a lot of Theatre Royal's family work – obviously The Railway Children toured the world over – which was amazingly good, and when I went up to look around the theatre post the refurb, I saw it was even better: such a warm house to play Shakespeare in."

The Watermill Theatre's Shakespeare productions are noted for their innovation; Romeo + Juliet and Twelfth Night will be no different, using an ensemble company of actor-musicians that will appear in both plays, each with live music to the fore.

"Innovation has to be at the centre of what we do," says Paul. "With Romeo + Juliet, we've gone for a very contemporary setting in Capulet's  bar, with lots of music, gigging, partying and anarchy, and in the second half the bar will turn into the tomb – and they don't look massively dissimilar. What we emphasise is that the point they must feel most alive is when they're closest to death."

Whereas Shakespeare’s immortal tale of an all-consuming young love features music by Mumford and Sons, The Vaccines, The Civil Wars and Hozier, Twelfth Night’s dreamlike fantasy world will be evocatively reimagined in the 1920s where prohibition is rife and Europe is still reeling from The Great War.

Fusing the radical spirit of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong with modern musical references, Twelfth Night promises to be a dizzying and beautiful version of Shakespeare’s "perfect play". "Like Romeo + Juliet, Twelfth Night will be set in a bar, but it's a jazz bar in the Twenties with a very different feel to the production with all the glorious music of that era," says Paul.

"There'll be a mixture of Twenties' classics infused with a modern twist to convey this mystical world of Illyria. The music will be much brassier and more refined than the rumbustious atmosphere of Romeo + Juliet."

Tickets for Romeo +Juliet and Twelfth Night can be booked on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Visit yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/event/yisf_2017 for more festival details.