love shakespeare. did a hamlet run tonight, looked someone dead in the eye to say “am i a coward?” during a speech and the fucker shrugged and nodded
we literally ruined society when we invented the fourth wall. let’s bring back call and response. heckling, even. fuck you hamlet you dumb piece of shit kill your uncle or shut up
"When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side… there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.”
And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period."
Oskar Eustis on ArtBeat Nation
I was in the front row of a Hamlet performance where the "Am I a coward?" was directed at me and I, being a no-impulse-control gremlin, hollered back "Yes!!" (they'd primed us ahead of time that audience interaction was encouraged). Hamlet got right up in my face as he kept talking and just kept going until I gently pushed him back; I forget what line it was on when it happened but he took the direction of the push and reeled away across the stage.
This meant that I had marked myself as someone willing to be fucked with, and so during the graveyard scene later he approached me again. "Here hung those lips that I have kissed--" he booped my mouth with the skull's "-- I know not how oft."
I have stories related to me from those at Blackfriars, the American Shakespeare Center (they play in a replica of the original Blackfriars, with modern safety conventions like lightbulbs in the chandeliers, but a great dedication to the way structure shaped the original work in the original Blackfriars. Their house is only about 45 ft deep (roughly 15 m I think), which is about the max distance two sighted people can be from each other and still make eye contact. They play with the stage and house equally lit, they talk to the audience, they enter from the audience, they whip up crowds from within the audience. It’s fantastic. But anyway, on to the stories.)
Hamlet. There’s a scene where Hamlet sees Claudius praying and debates whether to kill him now or wait (because if Claudius dies praying he will automatically go to heaven). The actor playing Hamlet was genuinely asking the audience the questions in the speech, and when he got to “and should I kill him now?” someone in the audience shouted “YES KILL HIM HE NEEDS TO DIE!” Hamlet took the entire rest of the monologue to that person, enumerating his reservations so persuasively that they started to nod in agreement.
Romeo and Juliet. In this production, the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt happens in several rounds, of which Mercutio won the first. Mercutio’s actor made the choice, upon his victory, to run down the audience with his hand out for high-fives. He decided this in rehearsal, so he had time to plan for the three responses people would probably give him: a) a high-five back; b) being stunned and not reacting; and c) the old “oops too slow.” What this Mercutio did not prepare for was the audience member who panicked and deposited their handful of M&Ms into his open palm. The way I heard it, Mercutio was still processing this when Benvolio came up beside him and stole the M&Ms out of his hand to eat them.
King Lear. Edmund has a speech in which he asks whether he should marry “Goneril? Regan? Both? Neither?” Again, the actor was legitimately asking the audience, and again he’d prepared for the audience to respond in favor of any of those choices. What makes it even cooler was that the next line is “Neither can be enjoyed while both remain alive,” which works as a response to any of those options. One night, though, Edmund got his answer as “KILL THEM BOTH AND TAKE THEIR MONEY!” To which he gleefully agreed, “Neither can be enjoyed while both remain alive!!”
#Oh I have SO many stories from peak audience moments at the American shakespeare center#I have been to plays there that legit felt more like rock concerts#And I don't even mean the parts of the show where the cast is also a live band and they play#Covers of songs relating to the show#Fair maid of the west with Ginna Hoben#We were all SO on her side we absolutely lost our whole shit any time she even entered or exited#Knight of the burning pestle where Rick would pick a random audience member to be his lady love he was fighting for every night#And one time (I saw it thrice) he picked an older lady#And there's a part of the show where iirc he like gets almost defeated?#And he calls out to his lady love to like inspire him to keep fighting smth like that#And she Got Up Out Of Her Seat and went over to him and kissed him on the cheek#And no one was expecting that least of all Rick#And we all lost our shit whooping and hollering#They did a hamlet where...I forget who was polonius that year but there's a line where he's like 'what was I gonna say again'#And he paused SO long on that line you were legit unsure if he the actor had actually forgotten it#And once someone in the audience called out the next line and he was like 'oh that's right' and carried on#It was scripted though there were other nights no one said anything and we all sat there#In wonderful horrid awkward silence#Until he resumed#Please go if you get a chance#And sit stateside (via @rootingformephistopheles)
I was in a production of Hamlet in a small black box theatre, when a drunk guy came in from from outside, wandered onstage and started singing "We built this city on rock and roll." The guy playing Hamlet just went with it until the stage manager and crew could usher the drunk guy back outside. Then Hamlet continued with his next line, which was (no joke) "Now I am alone." Brought the house down.
#shakespeare#this is the kind of shit that gets me hyper#I love it so much#best production of hamlet I’ve seen to date was in an historic home where the actors guided you through a house built in the gilded era#and the basement was entirely marble for cooling purposes because it was pre-refrigeration obvs#and the way Hanlet’s howling ECHOED#when he realized Ophelia was dead#it was primal#it made people take a step back#and also you had to stand and watch Ophelia drown in a claw foot tub as she reached out to you offering flowers#it was fucking insane#I loved it#I’m giddy just thinking about it @thebibliosphere please please please say more about this!!!
I was actually scrolling my blog to see if I’d talked about it before but I can’t find it, which is shocking because it was truly one of the best performances I’ve ever seen.
I forget what year it was, but the play took place in the historic James J Hill House here in St Paul. Hill was a railway tycoon during the gilded age, with all the disparity of wealth and privilege that implies. He was so successful and obscenely wealthy he became known as The Empire Builder and the grandness of his home reflected that. The walls in the dining room are literally gold. It’s breathtaking. It’s obscene. It’s perfect for the kind of corruption and rot that takes place in Hamlet under a gilded veneer.
The play started in the viewing gallery, with actors walking through the literal gilded halls of the mansion, the leather wallpaper stamped with gold filigree glittering in the gaslamp—the perfect setting for the wedding scene. As the opening progressed the lights were dimmed until only Hamlet was visible illuminated from the upper gallery by harsh modern lights above, just this chillingly beautiful cold light after all the warmth of the gaslamp and gold.
As the play progressed we were led further through the house, witnessing Hamlet talk to the ghost of his father on the grand staircase—the stairs further used to show hierarchy among the characters with Hamlet spiraling ever lower until we were invited to descend into the bowels of the house through the servants quarters, an area just as vast as the rest of the house but infinitely colder and utterly devoid of the opulent grandeur above.
The space is also nearly entirely marble, which leeches the warmth from the air, so even huddled together the audience grew colder and colder the longer we were down there.
It also meant the echo was amazing, and listening to Ophelia sing forlornly as she descends into madness was absolutely bone chilling. Watching her climb into a claw foot tub that had been placed in the center of the long hallway was also hair raising. She just kept singing, strewing flowers around the empty floor as we stood around her in a circle, helpless to stop her as she purposefully slipped under the water, holding her hands above the lip of the tub even as her head slipped under the water and the last echoes of her singing faded.
It made the Queen’s account of how Ophelia died just so… the lie of it. Like we were still standing there, she was still in the tub (head now above the water) and we’d witnessed the truth of it, and there was Gertrude telling any one of us in the circle who would listen how the poor maid “fell.” Anything to absolve themselves of the sin of her suicide.
We were turned around for a bit after that, led to the end of the hallway near the boiler room where the gravediggers leaned on gilded age coal shovels, and Hamlet got to do his bit with Yorick, the echo of the marble hallway dampened by having brought us back toward the stairwell, his voice soft and intimate. Showing his quiet resolve and return to sanity.
Only to pull us back moments later to center as he ran to where Ophelia’s funeral was taking place, and when I tell you, Hamlet’s howl of grief echoed. It reverberated. It was terrifying. It was amazing. People took instinctive steps away from him. It was just raw emotion bouncing off the walls of this cold, dark basement, entire worlds away from where we’d started.
The play ended back in the ballroom, the dead lying strewn amongst the wealth that couldn’t save them with only Horatio illuminated in gold by the lights. When Fortinbrass arrived he looked around the space like it was nothing, like the way we’d looked around the empty void of the basement. The wealth meant nothing to him. It was just another graveyard.
It was brilliant. I keep hoping they’ll host it again. It was such a good way to literally walk us through the story and use the environment to set the atmosphere. It was all I could do not to put billing flier in my mouth and eat it.
