Backstage in Washington

There are two kinds of Shakespeare lovers. There are those who believe his works ought to be preserved, as if encased in glass. And then there are people like Paata Tsikurishvili.

Tsikurishvili is co-founder, with wife Irina, of the Arlington-based Synetic Theater, whose mission is to tell stories through movement and music, not words. Back in 2002, when he announced plans for Synetic’s first Silent Shakespeare production, “Hamlet . . . the Rest Is Silence,” he says, “I had some friends say, ‘How dare you touch this! It’s Shakespeare.’ ”

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The argument against wordless Shakespeare is obvious: Like stashing the Little Mermaid’s song inside a seashell, stripping Hamlet of his soliloquy would rob the play of the very thing that makes it exceptional.

Tsikurishvili followed through on his vision, and “Hamlet . . . the Rest Is Silence” won six Helen Hayes awards in 2003. Synetic’s “Macbeth,” which opens Wednesday night, features returning cast members from the original 2008 staging, which also made out bandit-style at the Helen Hayes awards, winning five.

“We proved that Shakespeare is not only words,” he said. “It’s about metaphor, his themes, his [humanity], thirst, blood, power, love. . . . It’s powerful, and power is the action. That’s what we do.”

Tsikurishvili grew up in Soviet Georgia and was a young man as the Soviet Union was collapsing. He met his wife, Synetic’s resident choreographer, when she auditioned for the Georgian State Pantomime Theater, where he worked. Within months they were married. He was 23, she was 18. “It was just like Romeo and Juliet,” Tsikurishvili says.

They eventually came to Washington and started their own theater in 2001. “Synetic” is a combination of “synthesis” and “kinetic.”

Ryan Sellers, who plays Banquo, said the audience response “is a grab bag. . . . A lot of the older generation doesn’t like it. . . . But the younger generation responds to the high pace of it.” Synetic’s “Macbeth” clocks in at 90 minutes with no intermission — instead of the customary 2¹ / ₂ to 3 hours.

Tsikurishvili insists that the text, though unheard, is ever-present. “We are not ignoring it. We are absorbing it.”

Irakli Kavsadze, the actor playing Macbeth, agrees: “Those words drive my body, my hands, my eyes, my mouth. Everything.”

‘¡Ay, Carmela!’

Tragedies are unique; analogizing them is a tricky business. But the day Jose Luis Arellano Garcia, director of “¡Ay, Carmela!,” and David R. Peralto, head of music composition, sit down to discuss “¡Ay, Carmela!” in the box office of GALA Hispanic Theatre happens to be Sept. 12. The sky is as “radical clear” as Washington’s seen in a week and Peralto cannot help but connect 9/11 to the Spanish Civil War, which serves as “Carmela’s” historical setting.

“September 11 was an attack on freedom,” Peralto says. “So it’s the same thing.”

“¡Ay, Carmela!” is about “the memory, why we cannot forget,” Garcia says. “The Spanish Civil War was a fight for freedom. We cannot forget the past. All of Washington, D.C., is saying we can’t forget our past.”