Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark – William Shakespeare
“… it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though performed at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.”
We witness a country in a state of emergency. The whole play lasts a single night. The action is set in a reception hall. At this scenery the marital ceremony of the new king and queen will take place. The persons in the play are both the organizers of the reception and the guests. The process of the play follows the structure of the ceremony. The scenery functions as a passage, as the backstage of a great feast taking place outside the stage. A sounds cape of music, noises, voices, accompanies the action on stage. Something threatening happens offstage but we are never able to see it. As time passes by, the feast’s gradually been disorganized, the persons are derailed. We become witnesses to a cruel game of domination, surveillance, corruption and revenge.
All the characters of the play are tools of a mechanism which they, voluntary or not, serve. Starting from the leader to the rebel, this mechanism sets role models for everyone. In this structure everyone has his part and everyones route is predestined. Like a great dance in which both masters and servants, rich and poor, perpetrators and victims must step into and follow till they crush.
The play is set in this context. Hamlet, citizen of a drowning world, struck by his father’s ghost takes on re-joining time. He wants to be the spoiler of the feast, the one who will fix the broken parts of this world. His thoughts strike the new regime but all soaked in doubt, they are erased before they become actions. The game is rigged and Hamlet knows it. Once he has this knowledge, nothing can convince him to act. Hamlet is seen in relation with the citizens in modern societies. Even though we do perceive injustice in the world around us, we grow reluctant to the belief that a major change is to come.
The ghosts are here. They exist in every trail of all the bestialities done in the name of humanity by human beings. It’s the voice of ghosts calling us to avenge, to revolt, to take arms against the sea of troubles, only to repeat man’s oldest tale: self-adjudication.
Emphasis is given to the political dimension of the play: a country in a crucial, transitive situation is threatened by an external enemy but at the same time is being hit by internal revolts at such a point that is being surrendered effortless and headless to the besieger. As the next master takes on, the feast starts over again.
The target of the performance is the creation of a dialogue between the play and today:
Are we haunted nowadays by ghost-voices?
Whos got the power, the one that hits or the one that hurts?
Can we talk today about free consciousness?
Is there life after birth?
How is life worth living?
Is the contemporary individual able to resist to the suppression of authority?
Are we able to be released of our personal and social chains?
Are we condemned to dance up to the end in compulsory feasts?
