Thank you for visiting our archive. Each performance submitted to our website will be explained in detail in its own blog post. You can choose to look through these posts in a variety of ways.
All 74 on-stage deaths from Shakespeare's oeuvre realized in physical comedy by four actors. With a LED-display counter monitoring the 75 deaths (they include the fly in Titus Andronicus) and propelling the action to the zero, The Complete Deaths is a fast-paced and entertaining tribute to the tragic ends of so many of Shakespeare's characters.
Read More“This provocative dual-language adaptation of Hamlet, featuring Tony Award-nominated actor Arian Moayed, is set in Persia circa 1916, on the eve of the first World War and the arrival of the British.
Prince Hamlet returns home to find his father murdered and his mother remarrying the murderer, his uncle. Meanwhile, war is brewing. With passages spoken in Farsi, this version of Shakespeare's most celebrated tragedy explores the resonance between Hamlet‘s central dilemma and the pressures of embracing or resisting Western influences – cultural, political and spiritual – both then and now. It is a searingly relevant and vibrantly fresh take on one of the most influential dramas in English literature.
The OBIE Award-Winning Revelation Readings series provides a unique opportunity to hear new classic plays performed by many of the finest actors in New York.” –description from the Red Bull website.
Read MoreKing Lear has been exiled by his daughters, Hamlet by his uncle Claudius. Lear, accompanied by his Fool, meets Hamlet in a cemetery where they examine each other's lives. This performance includes extraordinary puppetry and audience participation.
Read More“James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare 1599 traces how the events of 1599 sparked Shakespeare’s incredible outpouring of creativity. England attempted to crush a rebellion rapidly turning into a quagmire, weathered threats from a super power and waited to see who would succeed its unpopular ruler. (Sound familiar?) And Shakespeare’s completed the unfinished Henry V, wrote Julius Caesar, As You Like It and drew up the first draft of Hamlet. Irondale’s 1599 will feature intimate, streamlined productions of these four plays, all performed in one evening of epic theatre.” –from company website
Read MoreThe Swedish premiere of Ambroise Thomas’ opera. Director Stephen Langridge - artistic director – focuses on political manipulation and family relations that are so complex they could drive anyone to madness. In a modern setting where you are watched everywhere it’s hard to differ between reality, illusion and paranoid delusions.
Read More“A multilingual reading of Hamlet– the most frequently performed and translated play in the world — by the students, faculty, alumni, and supporters of the University of Ottawa.”
Read MoreThe Jack Studio Theatre is a space for companies to explore. They also boast their own in-house team, and have received multiple Off West End Nominations, including design nominations for such Shakespearean productions as Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar. This is Stubbs Hughes’ second adaptation and second production.
The Jack Studio Theatre is a space for companies to explore. They also boast their own in-house team, and have received multiple Off West End Nominations, including design nominations for such Shakespearean productions as Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar. This is Stubbs Hughes’ second adaptation and second production.
This production was part of the events sponsored by Texas A&M University (College Station, TX) during the "First Folio: The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare" traveling exhibition. 7 actors. 28 characters. 5 flashlights. Hundreds of lightbulbs. A play-within-a-play. Fratricide. Insanity. Revenge. Comedy. (Yes, comedy!) And an accordion.
Read MoreThis production was part of the events sponsored by Texas A&M University (College Station, TX) during the "First Folio: The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare" traveling exhibition. Texas A&M was selected to host an exhibit of Shakespeare's First Folio of 1623 from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. This exhibition was to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, and one site in each state was selected to host the exhibit. This is a rarely seen 1710 German adaptation of Hamlet. Acting as a laboratory for Oxford Professor Tiffany Stern’s research, the Hidden Room uses a new English translation by Christine Schmidle, and puppets created by Los Angeles’ Mystery Bird Puppet Show to imagine the staging conditions of an 18th century puppet play.
Read MoreHamlet (The First Quarto)
March 26 – April 10
Bad Quarto Productions
Directed by Tony Tambasco
For More Information:
www.badquarto.org
“Shakespeare's melancholy Prince of Denmark is brought to vivid life by an ensemble of 10 actors exploring the various pieces of work that make up the man. This reconstruction of one of the greatest English-language plays of all time will delve into the question of who is Hamlet and what makes him one of the most easily related to characters in all of theatrical literature.” –description from the company website
Read MoreTan Hiep Phat’s (a beverage company) Hamlet was first staged in Vietnam in 2013. Last year, the resident company at the National Drama Theatre decided to bring the play back onto the Vietnamese stage. The 2016 production run in Singapore marks their international debut. Director of the Vietnam National Theatre, Nguyen The Vinh, envisages the production being the beginning of a "cooperation between the theatre and the private sector."
Read More"Responding to the themes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet – but firmly set in modern-day Lewisham – LYT’s latest forum theatre play deals with difficult choices facing young people today. Created and performed by LYT’s Young Touring Company – a group of five creative trainees aged 16-24 – this interactive performance gives the audience a chance to make a better choice for the characters."
An interactive performance created by young actors from Lewisham Youth Theatre, a group based at the Broadway Theatre, Catford. Lewisham Youth Theatre is a registered charity funded by multiple sponsors. This is a free event for young people, presented as a part of Catford-upon-Avon Festival.
“Method in Madness follows a young Hollywood starlet struggling to connect with Shakespeare’s Ophelia in a West End staging of Hamlet. She desperately turns to method acting for salvation, but soon the boundaries between the theatre and her own reality become blurred. Amongst the bombs and sirens of Blitz-struck WWII London her stunning portrayal quickly becomes the performance of her life.
Method in Madness fuses both Shakespearean text and new writing with stunning physical theatre and extraordinary dance, soundtracked by the haunting music of singer-songwriter Laura Marling.”
A behind-the-scenes take on Shakespeare staged in a dressing room. Part of Catford-upon-Avon Festival.
“Having triumphed in Celebrity Big Brother, survived Dancing with the Stars, and battled with Meatloaf and Donald Trump, Keanu Reeves' favorite co-star takes on his biggest challenge yet: proving that he still has the ‘acting chops’ by performing all the parts in Hamlet with songs, multimedia and home-made puppets in his own personal tribute to the 2016 global Shakespeare 400 Celebrations.
Switching between beat poet narrator, puppeteer, singer, and action-movie director, Gary Busey (as imagined by David Carl) plays each scene in the style he feels appropriate. This mix of high and low-brow comedy celebrates Shakespeare’s play by proving it is still relevant, applicable and moving in the jaded, celebrity-crazy, meme-obsessed world that we (and David Carl) live in.” –from the company press release
To celebrate the Shakespeare jubilee, Dramaten organises a LARP (Live Action Role Play) called Gertrudes hen where 200 participants will explore the prelude to Hamlet: What happens after Hamlet’s father is killed and before Gertrude marries the murderer?
The jubilee is also celebrated at Dramaten throughout the spring with a special dinner, a quiz-night and other events.
Read MoreGothenburg Opera’s celebration of Shakespeare in 2016 is a concert with music inspired by Hamlet. Music by Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Gade, Stravinsky and Walton. Actors recite text from the play between the musical numbers. After the main concert the event continues with a smaller concert in the opera’s foyer.
Read More“A salt and pepper pot for the king and queen. A vase for the prince. A matchbox for the servant. A toilet roll tube for the Innkeeper. A water bottle for the messenger.
In Complete Works six performers create condensed versions of each and every Shakespeare play, comically and intimately retelling them, using a collection of everyday objects as stand-ins for the characters on the one-metre stage of an ordinary table top."
The Tobacco Factory Theatres opened in 1998 and initiated their two-play Shakespeare at the Tobacco programme in Spring 2000 with King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The organisation encourages experimentalism and aims to offer excellent art. This year the Factory Theatre season offers a Shakespearean double-bill: Hamlet and All’s Well That Ends Well.
Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory (stf) has produced 23 more Shakespeares (several of them twice), three Chekhovs, Stoppard’s Arcadia, Middleton & Rowley’s The Changeling and Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. It has enjoyed four national tours, co-produced with the Bristol Old Vic and the University of Bristol and played a season in the Barbican’s Pit. For the last two seasons it has co-produced its Bristol seasons with Tobacco Factory Theatres, a partnership that also produced Brian Friel’s neglected play, Living Quarters, at the Factory last autumn.
The company has been widely and repeatedly admired for the clarity of its story-telling, the raw intimacy of its in-the-round style at the Tobacco Factory, and the transparent unselfishness of its ensemble.
Read More“Shakespeare represents the Danish royal court as a corrupt political system which becomes a paranoid maze for Hamlet. Murder, betrayal, manipulation and sexuality are the weapons used in the war to preserve power. Not able to take on and fight the cynical rules of the game at the court, Hamlet stagnates and turns his aggressions against himself. His gift of distinguishing pros and cons becomes an insurmountable hindrance in accomplishing his goals, and as the last person with scruples in a system without any, he is finally doomed. With its central paradox of the incapacitated protagonist, Hamlet remains today a valid analysis of the intellectual dilemma between complex thinking and political action. Shakespeare serves up over twenty characters, allowing a political biosphere to arise out of differing interests and intrigue. In Ostermeier’s production, just six actors will play all these characters, constantly changing roles. Hamlet’s progressive loss of touch with reality, his disorientation, the manipulation of reality and identity are mirrored in the acting style, which takes pretense and disguise as its basic principle.”—From Schaubühne’s website
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This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
