Around Campus ARTS & PERFORMANCES
HAMLET: The Method in the Madness
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n honor of GDS’s 75th anniversary, the GDS High School theater program presented a 75-minute virtual version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Every audience member had a box seat with the best view in the house on opening night in January. Despite the isolation of that Zoom rectangle, the show was a sumptuous experience that relied upon weeks of behind-the-scenes audio and visual tinkering. Student teams designed and delivered costumes and props to the actors’ homes. The sets crew created tessellated virtual backgrounds to create the illusion that all of the actors were haunting the same location. Actors prerecorded their performances, and the sound team added background audio and music for the live screening. From out of the madness of staging a virtual play, students’ methods and efforts delivered a virtual masterpiece. Learn more about the show at www.GDS.org/Hamlet.
King Claudius (Elias Rodriguez ’22, top center) wagers on the duel as (counterclockwise from top left) the queen’s lady (Leila Jackson ’22), Queen Gertrude (Jacqueline Metgzer-Taylor ’23), Horatio (Noah Freedman ’22), Laertes (Aidan KohnMurphy ’22), and Osric (Stella Tongour ’22) look on. In a triumph of the visual effects team, (top row, left to right) Queen Gertrude, King Claudius, and Horatio join (center row, left to right) the queen’s lady, the priest (Elliot Oppenheim ’21), Hamlet (Caleigh Vergeer ’21), and (bottom row) Laertes in the graveyard.
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” – SHAKESPEARE
BOOK AS SCULPTURE What do you most value in a book?
High School art teacher Nick Ryan’s students explored and reimagined books, asking themselves questions to define and center value in their creative process.
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Katherine Davies ’24
How radically would you reimagine a book as sculpture?
What is essential to your experience of a book?
Sophie Bronner ’23
How will a viewer interact with it?
Helena Dobbs ’23
Now—imagine reinventing books…
Christian Charles ’24
Where will your book take the viewer?
Stella Tongour ’22
Cole Huh ’24
