HamletBy William Shakespeare
Centre College - 2024 Directed and Adapted by Daniel Bird Tobin Our core artifact for this show was the set itself. We built an in-the-round space on the stage that created an intimate and visceral Hamlet for the audience.
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About the Show
In cutting and crafting our version of Hamlet, I focused heavily on the family dynamic. The audience at Centre had not experienced Shakespeare in eight years, so I wanted to build a production that would share this beautiful language with them in an intimate and close environment. Sat on stage, with the action swirling all around them, the audience could see and experience every detail of the heart-breaking world the performers, designers, and technicians built.
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Production Photos
Photos courtesy of Brian Oates
Director's Note
I think if you’re doing a speech on an empty stage, why are you doing it? …
The whole point must be to share it with the audience.
-- Jane Lapotaire
The whole point must be to share it with the audience.
-- Jane Lapotaire
Thank you for being our audience tonight. You are the entire point of this endeavor. For nine weeks of rehearsal we have been “speaking the speech” to no one, hanging lights in an empty theatre, sewing costumes onto faceless mannequins. After all of that work, each of the over 40 artists working on this show are thrilled for you to arrive and complete our story.
On a personal level, this show is dedicated to Jane Lapotaire. Her teachings form the foundation of every line of Shakespeare that I read. Her words ring in my ears before each rehearsal, “If you play the antitheses - the words that complement or contrast or contradict each other - 80 percent of the text would come alive.” I hope we have done her justice and that this text comes to life for you. Heck, maybe we can even beat that 80%. That’s only a B- afterall...
Beyond her Shakespearean brilliance, Jane Lapotaire has lived an overwhelming life. She is someone who truly understands the antithesis of: To be, or not to be.
Speaking of her long, painful recovery from a massive brain aneurysm:
On a personal level, this show is dedicated to Jane Lapotaire. Her teachings form the foundation of every line of Shakespeare that I read. Her words ring in my ears before each rehearsal, “If you play the antitheses - the words that complement or contrast or contradict each other - 80 percent of the text would come alive.” I hope we have done her justice and that this text comes to life for you. Heck, maybe we can even beat that 80%. That’s only a B- afterall...
Beyond her Shakespearean brilliance, Jane Lapotaire has lived an overwhelming life. She is someone who truly understands the antithesis of: To be, or not to be.
Speaking of her long, painful recovery from a massive brain aneurysm:
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This is the hand I got dealt. This is part of my soul's journey on this planet. Some people say there is no point in suffering but I believe there is. If you learn from it, it hones the soul. When you're that ill, when you're no longer a mother or a wife or a leading actress or an author but just a very, very sick body then that is very humbling and you also get a great sense of other people's needs. If I'd not collapsed in a public place I'd be dead. I am very lucky to be given a second chance and I want to make use of it.
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Remarking on the passing of her friend, the playwright Pam Gems:
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When I opened the Guardian obituary and saw her name, I actually heard myself gasp. She was so full of life, so full of ideas, and so full of support for women who had it tough that somewhere in the back of my mind I assumed that Pam couldn’t die because she’d sit down and have a damn good discussion with Death about why it was important she went on living.
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Come, enter this world with us and give us a reason to ask that question: to be, or…