HAMLET written by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE directed & adapted by RANI O’BRIEN
DECEMBER 10 - 12, 2021 DAVID COPELAND BLACK BOX THEATRE, CFA 354 855 COMMONWEALTH AVE
Artistic Team Director Assistant Director Stage Manager Scenic Designer Assistant Scenic Designer Sound Designer Lighting Designer Composer Costume Designer Costume Designer Costume Coordinators Technical Director Dramaturg Production Assistants
Rani O’Brien (they/she) Trevor Turnbow Daniel Perkins (he/him) Riley Satterfield Sirena Lopez (she/her) Elliot Dupcak Kevin Dunn (they/he) Jay Eddy (they/them) Kate Brugger (she/her) Madelyn Guyet (she/her) Lizzy Kircher (she/her) Trevor Turnbow Reanna Valencia (she/they) Annika Helgeson (she/they) Grant Powicki (he/him) Owen Sloane (he/him)
Cast Ophelia Rosencrantz, Gravedigger Guildenstern, Orsik Laertes, Actor Polonius Hamlet Claudius, Ghost of Old Hamlet Horatio Gertrude/Hamlet Understudy Gertrude Understudy Swing Actors
Madeleine Bedenko (she/her) Kate Brugger (she/her) Madelyn Guyet (she/her) Madison Kartoz Lizzy Kircher (she/her) Emma Kuhlman (she/her) Henry Morehouse Clarice Reiner (she/her) AJ Welker (she/her) Annika Helgeson (she/they) Kate Brugger Madelyn Guyet Madison Kartoz Clarice Reiner
Crew Run Crew Properties Master
Serena Arora (she/her) Leah Hohauser (she/her) Sirena Lopez (she/her)
A Note from the Director When thinking of Hamlet, one often slips into the viewpoint of the academic, the psychologist, or the 10th grade English teacher. As a play with a four-hundred-twenty-year reputation, it is easy to critically scrutinize the characters Hamlet and Ophelia, and the events that unfold in Elsinore. This scrutiny becomes an intellectual exercise of conjecture about the mental health of these tragic heroes, putting us on the outside of their struggle, only to peer in like doctors, examiners, or knowers. But we don’t know anymore about life than Hamlet, Ophelia, or any of the characters at Elsinore. In fact, we must acknowledge that we might know less. For you see, the magic of theatre is that our perceptions become a part of the play. To “[measure] one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on” (W.E.B. Du Bois) is the tragedy of both Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet, a son traversing the depths of grief in an unstable political world, must deal with how society puts the world “mad” on him; while Ophelia must fight for her way out of a world in which she is reduced to nothingness because of her gender. These societal preconceptions have real consequences on their life, and death. And now that you’re here with us, your preconceptions do too. In the best theatre, you are asked to get on the rollercoaster of empathy and discover, along with our most cared-for figures, what human experience is at the core of their struggle. We, the players, ask that you, the people of Elsinore, consciously catch your conceptions before they capture your heart. Wear us “in [your] heart’s core, ay, in your heart of heart” (Hamlet) and see what bursts forth. Rani O’Brien Director & Adaptor
“hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature” If you were to leave Copeland Studio and take just a few steps across Comm. Ave, you would find, overlooking the lobby of Boston University’s very own Booth Theatre, William Shakespeare’s invocation to theatre artists to “hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature” (pulled directly from the second scene of Hamlet’s third act). True to his word, when Hamlet premiered at London’s Globe Theatre in 1600-1602, Shakespeare’s text depicted an uncanny reflection of the society he was entertaining. Unlike the larger-than-life Julius Caesar (1599) or mythological Midsummer Night (1595) fairy monarchs before him, Hamlet represented a new kind of hero tasked with a mission familiar to every member of Elizabethan society: to save his own soul within an institution that suppressed and disavowed his very humanity. While the Elsinore Hamlet faced in 1600 closely mirrored the religious and political institutions rife with turmoil and conspiracy in Elizabethan England, theatre artists conjure this oppressive and morally corroded kingdom to hold an indicting mirror to the institutions that shape society to this day. “‘Something is rotten’ in every state,” notes Harold Bloom, echoing Horatio’s indictment of Denmark. Deconstructing the patriarchal lie at its foundation has proven central to understanding the “rot” at the core of our Elsinore. As our nation emerges from the COVID era and Trump administration more isolated and divided than ever, social injustices (themselves the products of decades, if not centuries-old institutional corruption) rear their heads at every turn. Our new presidential administration’s scant attempts to indict or change these systems of oppression are far from revolutionary. So it is up to the individual’s defiant cry for his own soul alone to shake the austere walls of the institutions that have long silenced and divided us. In Hamlet we ask, can the new (hu)man save his own soul? Can he save humanity? Annika Helgeson Dramaturg
Special Thanks Special thanks to Anita Castillo-Halvorssen, Nelson Eusebio, Dani Martineck, Patrick McCann, Nora Brigid Monahan, Matthew Parker, and Sam Plattus.
Upcoming Projects Passage DEC 9-12 Studio ONE, CFA 104 | 855 Commonwealth Ave by Christopher Chen | Directed by Malika Oyetimein Tickets are $20; visit www.bu.edu/cfa/theatre/season to reserve
Springboard Project DEC 10-13 First Floor Student Lounge, CFA 102 | 855 Commonwealth Ave Public readings of works in progress presented by School of Theatre students.
For more details, visit www.bu.edu/cfa/theatre/season