Even though my Hamlet is still over eight months away, publicity waits for no Dane. The Boardmore’s season launch is nigh, and with that comes posters and season brochure blurbs. Here’s what we’ve come up with, courtesy of Chris Walzak Photography (Chris is amazing and deserves more work! If you’re in Cape Breton, look him up!):
The motivation for this image was a desire to incorporate the familiar and expected skull motif with an element of (doomed) romance. I also managed to sneak in some flowers, both a motif associated with Ophelia and (in my production) an important counter-balancing motif for all the death, decay, and corruption.
I confess I didn’t come up with this striking image on my own. I was inspired in part by poster art for the Boardmore’s own production of Pillowman by Martin MacDonagh — easily the most striking poster design to hit Cape Breton bulletin boards in years:
And there’s no denying the connection to this poster I came across for Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine, a wondrous strange adaptation of Hamlet that deserves its own post someday:
This poster may be more outré than ours (boys kissing boys and all that), but I think our image is a lot more striking, mostly due to KO’s arresting gaze. I also think it’s more intriguing to see Hamlet actively moving in to kiss the skull/Ophelia, rather than accepting a kiss passively (my Hamlet doesn’t do passive!).
And here’s the blurb, which I feel does a nice job of incorporating the themes and motifs which I feel are going to be most important in our production:
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Something is rotten in Denmark. The murdered King rises from the grave to give his son an impossible task — find the path to revenge without losing his mind, heart, or soul. From this poison puzzle springs one of the most beautiful, controversial, and gripping stories ever told — adapted by Scott Sharplin into a macabre fantasy unlike anything you’ve ever imagined.
