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- Hamlet is the most radical of plays. It is a play not just about plays — but much more profoundly — about how the mirror held up to nature changes nature; reveals nature... about how art tames nature into truth. The first level of our performance is about talking to the audience, but the next level is about talking to the audience about themselves….
- Imagine, for instance, you sat next to Salieri at the premier of a new opera by Mozart… Salieri might whisper in your ear about how awful Mozart is, about how frivolous or indulgent or boring Mozart is (all out of jealousy of course) — but when the music really began, you’d be ashamed of having listened to Salieri : the fourth rate composer who shows up to the performance, only to hate-watch it. And that’s the thing — many theater goers are those Salieris — those hate-watchers; indifferent to Shakespeare; indifferent to language; jealous of people who can play and perform and create… fourth rate from top to bottom.
- But the audience can also, under the right conditions, can become the person sitting next to Salieri — the person capable of feeling shame; of being tamed into truth, into self-awareness.
- That’s the radical thing about great art — Shakespeare or Mozart — it starts to talk to you about your experience with it; it analyzes your response to it… while that response is happening.
- Hamlet is the closet thing we’ll ever see to a character writing their own play, becoming their own author, and becoming the author of everyone else. Hamlet dares to step out of…
