gertrude
H2016: Seeking Absolution
Even though I have completed a draft of my script adaptation, I feel reluctant to share it with my actors. This is partly because I’m hoping that our summer rehearsals will give them a chance to make some discoveries independent of my editorial meddling; but I realized that was not the sole reason for my…
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Gertrude?
My actors’ Big Questions zero in on their own characters, as you might expect. As director, I have other concerns. And right from the start of my relationship with Hamlet (that is, 25 years), Gertrude has been a concern. At a guess, I’ve seen a dozen stage productions in that time, and half a dozen…
The Seven Danish Sins
How do the characters in Hamlet correspond to the Seven Deadly Sins? This might be a throwaway thought, or a distracting but dead-end puzzle; or it could be key to my entire production. It came into my mind shortly after posting about my vision of Elsinore as an endless, mandatory party, like the Jazz Age,…