Hamlet: Final Studio Rehearsal
We did the Hamlet designer run in the studio today, our last studio rehearsal. Where did the time go? No, really. Where? The last seven weeks have absolutely flown by. Now we’re moving the project upstate to our tent theatre in Garrison, NY.
It’s difficult to encapsulate all that has happened while getting Hamlet off the page and into our bodies. More difficult to predict what the next month is going to bring (we open on July 2). HVSF is opening Comedy of Errors and Around the World in 80 Days at the same time as Hamlet and with the same company of actors. So Hamlet work will be sandwiched between rehearsals and performances of those projects. However, even with the intermittent schedule, the play will continue to steep, and (hopefully) burrow itself more deeply into our consciousnesses.
I’ve never directed Hamlet before, but the actors and myself are amazed daily by the power of the play (‘no human being could have written this play’, ‘someone sold their soul to the devil’) and the way it continually changes before our eyes as we work on it.
Yesterday, we were working on an ostensibly simple scene, the ‘interrogation’ scene where Hamlet is brought before Claudius and the whereabouts of Polonius’ body are demanded. First time through we tried it one way (act the crazy), then another (play it straight, speaking the crazy script), and then another (Claudius very patient), and another (Claudius very impatient), and another (Hamlet really out of control) and yet another (Hamlet wanting Claudius to be his Dad). All worked like gangbusters, the actors simply being as truthful with each other as they could, but this last worked like gangbusters, and took us completely by surprise. And of course; Hamlet has just become a murderer, he probably needs a little parental support, and who better to get it from than the man who killed his father.
At the end of rehearsal, the scene felt really cracked open, and available to everyone, like an ever-broadening canvas (though I hate using painting metaphors for theatre).
We chose to leave the scene open, not picking which of these approaches was the best idea, and today, during the run-through, the scene went still another way, even further (Hamlet needs a Dad in Claudius, but then remembers that Claudius killed his father).
This is one short scene in a 4,000 line play filled with scenes each of which bears many interpretations, most of which are much more complex than the interrogation scene. The play is incredibly elastic, open to vast possibility. But I think what we’re finding most significantly is that the real horsepower in the play becomes apparent when we let go, and let the play do the work. Then it’s like being at the top of the first hill on a roller coaster and sticking both arms way up in the air. You just let go.
Or perhaps you just let be.
