Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.
Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Shakespeare and Possibility. My name is Jennifer Burkett, and I am the postdoctoral fellow here at Shakespeare at Notre Dame. This episode captures a lively discussion and audience Q& A from our 2023 Summer Festival world premiere of Hamlet 5050. In this episode, I'm joined by our resident Shakespearean scholar, Professor Peter Holland, as well as the director and co adapter of Hamlet 5050, Vanessa Marosco. We'll be discussing all things Hamlet, Shakespeare, and adaptation. I hope you enjoy. Tonight, I am joined by very special guests, Professor Peter Holland, who is the McNeill Family Chair of Shakespeare Studies here at Notre Dame. As well as Vanessa Marosco, who is one of our co adapters of Hamlet 5050, as well as the director of tonight's production. So thanks, Peter and Vanessa, for being here. Hamlet. Shakespeare's longest play, and perhaps the most iconic. there's a rumored statistic that's been going around that says that on any given day in the year, Hamlet is being produced on stage somewhere around the world. I didn't know that statistic! That's extraordinary! If it's true, that is extraordinary, but I think it might be, it's feasibly true, and I think that's something I want to talk about, is why is this play got this masterpiece? Why do we like it still? Why is it continuously playing? Why is it Shakespeare's perhaps most famous play? What is it that gives it this long afterlife? I would say that the play has so many resonant moments and characters and lines that still make our hearts sing. They still speak to the human connection. And even if our world has shifted, and the, Those who embody those characters look different than they did in Shakespeare's time. There's something about it that still really stirs our heart, that plays with questions that are bigger than ourselves. And we see it in these echoes of culture. we see it like in our headlines. We see quotes within an article. We see it in our media. We see it in cartoons. If you ask a five year old to fill in the blank, Ready? You all can do this. To be, or we all know it, even if we don't know the rest of it. it's, well done. but I feel that it continues to resound and stir our hearts and our imaginations. And it's remarkable that it was written almost, I think, 450 years ago. I think that's absolutely right. It's also one of those plays that's got everything. you get mad scenes, that's one thing. You get a duel at the end, that's fun. Yeah, spoiler alert! And it's full of quotations. it's that play that, there's an old story of somebody going to see it for the first time, and if you do enjoy it, no, the play's too full of quotations. Um, it's the source of so much, but I think it's something else. What makes it distinctive? is showing somebody thinking. And that seems to me to be absolutely at the core of what Hamlet himself, not the play, he as an individual does. He thinks. Perhaps he thinks too much. Perhaps he thinks too curiously upon the event. There are all kinds of ways in which thought is fascinating but also troubling. And As soon as you start thinking about how he thinks, and what he thinks about, you're into a space in which this play gets inside somebody's skull. More than any other Shakespeare play. of course, Macbeth is an interesting person, and so is King Lear, and. Don't hear it as a kind of rejection of them. But this is representing a thinking person. And it does it. Afresh does it by making you think about thinking. and that leads me to another question, Vanessa is what drew you and Peter Hilton co adapter, what drew you to Ham it then for this 50 50 project? in, the 50 50 project seeks to, create gender equity in the workplace of Shakespeare's plays. So one of the barriers to doing Shakespeare's plays in a contemporary setting is the fact that Shakespeare, of course, had no women to write for. He didn't live long enough for it to be legal in England for women to perform on stage. it's hard for us to imagine now, but imagine that Shakespeare is alive, and he's looking at his actors and writing for them. A contemporary example would be something like, Saturday Night Live, where you have repeated, iconic performers that writers are constantly writing for, or an ongoing sitcom, where you actually are starting to write and serve your actors. Because he didn't have women to write for, although he certainly wrote some wonderfully iconic women's roles that we still are very excited about. It means that often the women's voice are underrepresented. They were in Shakespeare's time usually played by boys, by young men, who were obviously quite skilled, but still the equivalent of what we might think today of as an intern. Somebody who was on the younger side of their career. And Hamlet, being such an iconic play, apparently, There's a show going on every night of the year, yeah, so there's certainly one tonight, yes. was, surprising in its numbers. Do you know that in Hamlet, which if you perform the full text available to us, runs about four hours long. At least. That was good. At least, he says. Hamlet himself has 1, 500 lines. But his female counterparts, of which there are only two roles, Ophelia and Gertrude, have about 150. So it's a very diminutive job. It's a very small voice on the impact of this incredible thinking play. And Hamlet, as written, for its women identifying characters, there are only 8. 5 percent of the lines are written for women. 8. 5%. And so Peter Hilton and I looked at this text and we thought, We can do better than that. Most industries in our contemporary world are seeking to do better than that. If we were in another industry and we said one gender, had only 8. 5 percent of, of ownership over what the creative process is, what this innovation is, what this product is that we're bringing to you, an audience. We would call out that industry for, unjust practices. And so we thought, is there a way for us to still experience the joy of Hamlet? Really, Shakespeare's Hamlet, but update it for our modern workplace. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're so excited about the show. I hope you are equally as excited as we are. and I want to bring up one thing about both of you have a very exciting job of having adapted and edited Shakespeare's works. It surprises most people to find out that There is no original copy of Shakespeare's works. There is no original hamlet that we can grab hands on that is Shakespeare's copy that tells us exactly how this play was done in the 17th century. There is nothing that says exactly what it was. In fact, we've got multiple copies to choose and pick from. And so what that leads us is an opportunity to make choices and make decisions that bring forth interesting productions and interesting additions. so I really wanted to talk to you both a little bit about, in your experience, Peter, I know you've Edited A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Coriolanus, and currently, most recently, King Lear. Still working on King Lear. It's the job of the rest of my life. it's a later play for a later actor, and a later editor as well. and Vanessa, I know you've adapted Symboline to Imogen, and also is A Midsummer Night's Dream as well. And so I would love both of you to talk to each other, talk with us about what it's like to write and with Shakespeare. As an editor, as an adapter and how those jobs are similar or different and what kind of things keep you up at night as you're trying to figure out what to put down on the page. You want me to go, you go first. I should first say that I love Shakespeare and when, when I'm adapting Shakespeare, I think that my goal is to partner him. Into the 21st century. And so I'm always trying to work with him. his rhetoric is extraordinary to me. I feel like his lines are extraordinary. So I'm always looking for opportunities to preserve that joy of the language. and really bring that forward. As opposed to, there have been many plays that are recited. Responses to Shakespeare that perhaps are new plays that have a new voice and they sound different and the story may be based on Shakespeare. And those are all valid choices. I think that the Fat Ham, recently was in New York and was extraordinary, which is a response to Hamlet. And there, and so I think Shakespeare's created this blueprint that many writers are inspired by. I would say the work I do as an adapter is more about being in partnership with Shakespeare. So that, he and I can bring this play to you, and you right now. Not to Shakespeare's audience, who knows what they actually liked. Except we do know they liked his plays, because they were extremely popular. But to bring it to you and to our workplace. So I'm always looking for that opportunity. And I think what you do in the adaptation, what I do when I'm editing a scholarly edition of a Shakespeare play, is to try to get inside his head. Not just to be writing with him, but to understand what it is that he was writing. And the whole process of what happens in rehearsal, I guess in your rehearsal room because of the kind of person you are, not every director's rehearsal room, is to see if you can understand what the play is doing. And I say not every director is like that, because I see a lot of Shakespeare productions in which the director has arrived with a concept, and the concept is plumped on top of the play, and somehow the play doesn't speak for itself. because everything has to be fitted to this idea that the director came to the rehearsal room with. Yeah, there, I feel there is often this pressure on a director to, Place a concept onto a Shakespeare play. that's going to be your mark as a director. are we going to set the Tempest on the moon? Things like that. Shall we put something in World War II? so we've all seen these productions or are aware of those kinds of productions. And I feel that they can be a trap. And it's a really tricky thing, actually, Peter, because it's often the first question I get asked when I'm interviewed to be a director, is somebody says, What's your concept? And it's a very trapping question, because it does, it leads down that road of trying to squeeze a conversation of a play into another conversation, rather than inviting us. Whatever our current cultural conversation is, I want to invite that through the play, rather than piece that onto the play and hold Shakespeare. Who's been dead for a long time. Responsible for the way we're talking about that now. In Hamlet, I think there's actually a really interesting example you brought up about the excitement in the text. Those were not your words, but of, of madness. And I feel right now we're in this really active current cultural conversation about mental health. And the way we understand mental health right now feels new, it feels, that we're forward thinking about it. I imagine in a hundred years we'll have a very different idea and lens and, of what that means. But right now, we are having a very, vivid, exciting conversation about mental health. Now Shakespeare's word for that was madness. I have no desire to hold him accountable for not using the words we use today. But I do think it's an incredible invitation to bring what we know into the rehearsal room, into, the creative process, to be in active dialogue with this story that Shakespeare calls madness. And the play is full of explanations of what has made Hamlet mad. Is Hamlet mad? If he is. But people say he's mad, so Polonius. He's mad. Thinks of Hamlet as mad, and he is perfectly clear why Hamlet is mad. He's found, he says the cause of Hamlet's madness. It's because he's in love with Ophelia and this relationship isn't quite going where Yes, we might call him Dr. Lon. Exactly. He's figured out the cause he's done the diagnosis and diagnosis is of course what we do in the audience as well. what is it that's doing this to him? As somebody once said about Hamlet, Weissman? Just think about it. Dad's dead. Mum's remarried indecently quickly. Somebody you don't quite trust. With cause. Spoiler. Sorry. with cause. And then Dad reappears as a ghost. And then you wonder Why it's all a bit upsetting and overwhelming? come on, isn't that ample reason to be more than a little irrational out of kilter? And he also says, and this is one of those moments that is so fascinatingly Shakespearean in its doubleness, Hammett says he's going, he says to the other people who are with him, see the ghost, I'm going to put on an anti disposition. I'm going to pretend. To be, let's call it, mad. And then he does things that sound like that, and we say, Oh, he's really mad. He's both performing madness as a device, and yet he is also perhaps confronting mental health issues and the seriousness of what life poses as a problem for him. absolutely. And which is it? As you perform madness and are also yourself, let's say, unbalanced. Not quite rational. Does that mean you're no longer playing at madness as well? it's a risk, right? it's a protective cloak in some way for him. It's quite strategic on his part, I think, to put on this cloak of madness so that his behavior will be acceptable in circles that it wouldn't otherwise have permission to be. But of course there's another character who goes mad in the play. ready for another spoiler alert? but Ophelia it's much discussed in her madness, and it doesn't seem that hers is a strategic or a protective cloak, but does certainly seem to stem from extreme circumstances in life, including the tremendous grief of losing one she loves. both to death and to rejection. And one of each, as it were. Yeah. think about Ophelia's problem. Sorry, another spoiler for those who don't know the plot, sorry. but She is in love with Hamlet, and Hamlet kills her dad. That's a very confusing life story. isn't that enough to lead you to the edge of irrationality? Um, usually, tragedy pushes people to extremes of experience. These seem so personal, so individualized, so thought about by these people, because we hear their thinking. We watch them thinking that then becomes the space in which those emotional states become entirely comprehensible. the thinking, I love that you keep coming back to this word, because it's something we've tried to innovate in Hamlet 5050, is to distribute the point of view of the thinking, so that, you'll still hear all the famous lines in Hamlet. That's one of the missions of 5050 Shakespeare, is to preserve the famous lines and make sure you have the opportunity to experience the joy of hearing those. but you might be surprised who says them. so in this incredible thinking play, it is, you have multiple access points to who is thinking. So it's not exclusively, while it is still Hamlet, the character Hamlet's story, it's not exclusively his thought process that we have access to. We have access to many other characters thought processes. And it's a very privileged role within Shakespeare's play to get to have soliloquy. Which is, in Shakespeare's time, direct address to the audience. He's actually having a conversation with you, in real time, about what he's thinking. And not necessarily having the answer, but perhaps posing a hypothesis. working through a philosophical proof, if you will. And ending with a rhyming couplet conclusion. which may or may not be conclusive, and he might change his mind in the next scene. But in this case, there's opportunities for many characters to share that thinking process about their shared experiences. and, I think it's one of the really exciting things about Hamlet 5050. Absolutely. and the play then poses the problem of the fact that thought often doesn't move the play forward. here's the thing. Years ago, many years ago, John Barton, who was one of the founders of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was asked to direct a production of Hamlet for American television. Starring Richard Chamberlain, who some of you will remember as Dr. Gildare. Those of us who are old enough to remember those shows. and the time slot for the production was 80 minutes. You had to do Hamlet in 80 minutes. I'm already stressed out. Yeah, you can imagine. And John, who always rose to a challenge, bless him, started looking at the play, and he cut out to be or not to be, because, as he said, quite rightly, actually it doesn't move the plot forward much. Nothing much happens except Hamlet thinks about something. Certainly cut it out. And needless to say, The TV company said, no way can we show Hamlet without To Be or Not To Be. But he was interested in the way in which some things don't advance the plot of a play. That thinking doesn't necessarily move you forward. Hamlet has an act of thinking about things and then thinking about the same thing again and being in more or less the same place that he was in when he was thinking about it. And then suddenly something happens and oh, it changes a bit but I'm still thinking about it. which is a very strange way of constructing plot. This isn't a play that is driven by the kind of plot that we expect people to be generating. if you offered this in a playwriting class you'd be told by your instructor, I think you've literally lost the plot, you've lost sight of the plot. So you have to think, what does that do to what we want the audience to be experiencing? I think that's such a great point. I do think that often the soliloquies, it seduces us into thinking, especially as a director, it can seduce one into thinking that they don't for the plot. But I would say that it Deepens our, connection to the human experience. as you even described this moment of thinking about something, and then thinking about it again, and thinking about it again, I thought, I've already done that today. where I've thought about the same thing over and over in multiple ways, in order to perhaps, and the struggle that we have, like the amount of courage and thought and, self exploration one has to do in order to take an extraordinary action, I think is quite a lot. And it produces moments in a play that were genuinely revolutionary. so I'm going to use an example. there is the moment when Hamlet sees Claudius at prayer. And thinks of killing him. Lots of spoilers tonight, Peter. Yeah, it's alright. Please still come to the show. And he tries to think through whether he should do it at this point. But hang on, if I kill him now Then, while he's praying, his soul will go up to heaven. That's not what I want. That's not revenge. That's not revenge at all. Yes, he wants the revenge kill. So something very interesting happened in people thinking about this play in the late 18th century. Two scholars independently published and argued the same thing. This is in the 1770s. That Hamlet says that. In order to rationalize the fact that he can't quite bring himself to do it. So we now have a notion that he doesn't mean what he's saying. It's an excuse he's posing for himself. Now, I'm not saying, for a moment, that is the right answer. I'm not saying it's the only way to play it. Those arguments would never work. But the idea that a character in Shakespeare doesn't mean what he says, but is using the statement, To themselves, in soliloquy, talking to the audience, but also to themselves, to mask what they're really having a problem with. That's a very interesting shift. And, as far as I can work out, Hamlet is the first time we can identify somebody really doing that. That's fascinating because I do think the soliloquies, most of Shakespeare's soliloquies, are true conversation with an audience, which again is why this sort of thinking that occurs within the play of Hamlet, which you'll see diversified in Hamlet 5050, has the, has that joy of being able to actually Not just see the wheels turning, which usually in life, we don't have access to each other's thoughts. But what if you did? What if you really could get in the, inside the head of somebody you loved and cared about? And, or at least you cared about in that moment, in that conversation. What would it be like to have those wheels turning? And I think it's the access to that mo those moments when we don't know what the outcome of those thoughts will be, and we're not as driven, as you said, based on plot, to know what the next action is, but to actually have access to those wheels turning. Wonderful. Speaking of speaking with the audience, we'd love to spend the next 15 minutes or so, we want to make sure you get to your seats in time for the production, but we'd like to open up the floor to questions from the audience, so if you have a question, yes, wonderful, thank you, right there. Okay, often it's a genre issue, for example, In movies, they color things differently when they tell you what somebody's thinking. In a novel, they'll tell you what somebody's thinking because they give you that information. Usually in theater, that doesn't happen as much. I wish you could, talk a little bit about that. So let's think for a moment about that word, soliloquy, that we use for these kind of speeches. And it comes from the Latin and it means speaking on your own. To yourself, with yourself, arguing with yourself, thinking something through. And this is absolutely right, it's also about speaking with the audience. when Hamlet says, Who calls me villain? I remember one production where somebody from the audience shouted back, You're a villain! And also he says, at least as Shakespeare wrote, He wrote, Now I am alone. Yes. But of course he's not alone, he's alone with you. Alone with me. in the Globe Theatre in London, then perhaps two and a half thousand people. I've got my own, but there are two and a half thousand people with me. Film has a very interesting response to this. There is a very great film version of Hamlet by a Russian director, Grigory Kuzintsev. He made it in 1964. 1964 was an important year in the world of Shakespeare. It was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth. Film industry allowed him to make a film of Hamlet, and he did something that, again, I don't think people had done before. There's Hamlet's very first soliloquy over this 2 2 solid flesh. He spoke as he was walking through a crowned room, and his lips didn't move, and we heard his voiceover. Now, film can do that very easily. We're used to the idea of a voiceover, but What we saw was nothing on Hamlet's face in that scene that showed what he was thinking, that those words were conveying to us through voiceover. I found that, I still find it every time I watch that sequence in the film, absolutely brilliant. Somebody is thinking and speaking to me, but I can't see it. I often say to my students, You don't know what I'm really thinking when I'm standing in front of you. I might be thinking about dinner. You're probably thinking, would this class please end, I'm so bored, or whatever it might be. We don't show that. But it's happening in our heads. And Hamlet is the play in which what's happening in your head is shown. Yes. Yes. But is there other theatre that does that? other plays? Yes, because Hamlet did. That's such a great point, that it has created a blueprint for, that has inspired many other playwrights. Other questions? I'm going to pass the mic to this, so we can all hear you. yeah, I was curious, this conversation about, the privilege of soliloquy and who gets it and whose thoughts we get to hear, and I was curious of your thoughts on how you diversify and consider equity with dialogue and who gets to be talked about and who's doing that talk. That's a great question. So within the playwriting structure that, based on the business model that Shakespeare was writing for, in general terms, you had a professionally experienced actor, which might be called a masterful actor, and you had an apprentice actor, and they were often paired together. And the masterful actor was frequently a stakeholder as well. So in contemporary terms, In LA, you've got an actor producer. Somebody who stands to gain from the success of the whole production. So they're looking after the whole production. And that was embodied by a man, so somebody who identified as a man, and as a woman, you were, your character, a woman identifying character was played by a boy, an apprentice. and what that, one way that manifests is that Shakespeare often writes the first lines. of a new idea, whether that's the top of the scene or a change in conversation, generally goes to his masterful role. So the masterful actor is initiating new ideas, is changing direction in a scene, often has the last line of a scene to take a whole company off. And the woman's role is usually responsive. So that, a great example is if you look at Much Ado About Nothing. If you know that play, we have these wonderful, iconically witty characters who banter to our great delight, Benedict and Beatrice. And a good masterful actor in the role of Benedict initiates an idea, and if he's really good at his job, he sets up the music of a line. And if Beatrice, played by a boy in Shakespeare's Day, is really good at his job, he then, as Beatrice, will respond with similar rhetoric that Shakespeare has written, and perhaps even imitate the music. So you've got, imagine like a teacher and a student, or a CEO and an intern. You've got somebody who's super experienced, who's doing this setup, and you get this wonderful music, like the setup person in Vaudeville, and you get the response of the boy playing the woman's role, and the audience reads it as wit. So that is part of the structure that the playwright has really put into place. What we've asked the question of is what if we diversify the leadership responsibility? So that in Hamlet 5050, one of the responsibilities lies to our women identifying characters to initiate ideas, to start a scene, to end a scene, to end a scene with a big rhyming couplet that's gonna go Cause everyone to follow them or say a queen will say come away or give embedded stage directions like kneel before me so that they're actually leading a scene in real time And that notion of apprenticeship is real. It was real for Shakespeare's company, because many of his, adult actors, I say adult, but the boy actors were aged between about 15 and 21. They're not children. they're not young boys. They carried on playing female roles after their voices broke. no indication of that stopped them continuing to play the female roles. It's as they're visibly aging, if you like, that they stopped playing those roles. but they play older women as well as young women. But, many of the, senior actors were members of trade guilds. Robert Armin, who played, fool roles, that Shakespeare wrote for him, was a member of the goldsmith's company. the boy actor might be literally apprenticed to a senior actor through one of the trade guilds. Not within the theatre company because there was no formal apprenticeship, but there was elsewhere in the system, and they could use that in interesting ways. And that's why I find so powerful those rare scenes, really rare scenes in Shakespeare, where two women are on stage alone together. they don't pass the Bechdel test, if you know what that is, but there's still two women on stage together. Yeah, but at least that's happening. my favorite example of it is the scene late in Othello when Desdemona is being prepared for bed by Emilia, and they have a long scene together where they're just talking together as they're going through something that must have happened every night. I don't call Emilia a maidservant, but her companion would prepare her for bed by unpinning her clothes. And in an era before zips and velcro, pins were what held your clothes on. Not buttons, pins. Queen Elizabeth I had a standing order for thousands of pins a month. Because how do you make one of those massively pleated ruffs? You take a flat piece of cloth and you fold it and pin it. You fold it and pin it. And you're pinned literally into your clothes. You can't unpin yourself. You can't take the pins out without your stabbing yourself. You need somebody to help you get undressed. And those two must have gone through this quite a few times by the end of the play. they've traveled together, et cetera. So They've got used to this moment, this very intimate, private moment. There's nothing quite like that for women in that world, within Hamlet. No, there isn't. But maybe there will be tonight. But maybe tonight. I couldn't possibly comment. No spoiler. More questions? So I'm fascinated by this language you're using of the workplace, and I feel like that's not something I hear a lot about in discussion of production. So I guess I'm curious, are you thinking of this, as an artistic project, or as more like a business model, and are those working together, or in conflict? I love that you asked that. I agree. I don't hear it discussed a lot. And, the theatre industry is, like many industries, asking a lot of hard questions about itself. And, many industries are seeking to update their models and their systems of how they do it, and the theatre industry is no exception. the business of Shakespeare's plays, I think, is one that's really important to consider, because, you There are so many theaters in the United States that bear, this playwright's name in their title. And so many Shakespeare plays are produced in the United States. So it is a workplace that is really worthy of our consideration. so I am interested in what if we allow ourselves to unite that, to have the conversation about business and the conversation about art, what if we don't see those as adversaries, but instead ask the questions together, so that they can evolve together and influence each So when I talk about the workplace of Shakespeare's plays, I'm considering not just the optics of it, meaning who do you see on stage, but what is the entire model of producing a Shakespeare play, what is it right now, and how can we do better, so that in some ways, what we've seen are many examples in the past, which are valid examples and still exist today, of breaking down this barrier of gender, and For example, we see, options of an all female Shakespeare, right? Where only women it's a similar response to Shakespeare. He had only one gender on stage. So that's a direct response where we have only one gender on stage. My experience of that as we produce that, if we look at the data around the United States, is that tends to be a concept. A little bit what you were talking about earlier, Peter. Somebody might ask me, what's your concept for the show? And a valid response would be all female. All female. I'm of the mind that we could consider gender to be beyond a concept design and perhaps is a workplace question. and other examples we see are cross gendering a role where you have a gender identity of a performer that is different than the gender identity of the character. We also see examples of re gendering where we take a character and then, change the gender of the character itself. So for instance, if we. Put a woman in, a woman performer in the role of a male Hamlet, that would be cross gendering. And if we then instead changed Hamlet to being a woman, that would be re gendering. Those ideas already exist. the first woman to play Hamlet on stage was, is a 200 year old idea. They're very valid ideas, but we were interested in a new idea. What if we actually innovated the content to bring more voices to the play? Because one of the things that occurs in the workplace of Shakespeare is if you only come in with it as a director with a concept, then not only is it a very long persuasion, But it's a very late persuasion in the business model. So that many choices have already been made by the time you're able to come to casting. Casting is one of the latest processes in the making of a play, in the way that we do business today. and and that persuasion is often ongoing in the room. And that's only the question of optics. What I've discovered in doing Hamlet 5050, at Shakespeare Notre Dame, Which I must credit for being incredibly courageous and bold in completely embracing this idea. Is when we started talking about Hamlet 5050, it's actually had a ripple effect throughout the company. Where the joyous, courageous conversations about equity and, and access to different aspects of the production have been embraced. have been spoken about and have been addressed. So it's actually had a tremendous impact on everybody's experience, whether we're talking about gender equity or other versions of access, it's invited all of those conversations. So my hope is to, by, by asking the hard business questions, we will also be able to, experience the joy of Hamlet, of doing Hamlet, and actually innovate our industry at the same time. And not only in terms of 50 percent of the cast, 50 percent of the crew, of the design team. You have to take it further. You can't say that actors are involved in a totally different kind of workplace. No, they're part of a really complex workplace. And if we're going to explore what we might mean by gender equity, it's got to spread throughout the system. That's right, and that includes different contracts that people are on. there's often, in many businesses, there's multiple tiers of contracts, right? Different pay scales for different Experience levels or different job titles, and theater is no exception to that. I know we think we often fantasize or, imagine ourselves as being, the place of making plays, and it's all play, but it's still a workplace. The rehearsal room is a workplace. the, marketing team is there showing up to work. The artistic director is showing up to work. The stage manager is showing up to work. And By having these conversations, we we also considered that at every level of pay, is there equity? And it doesn't mean that we answer all the questions right this time. What matters is that we're asking the questions. And so we're on a journey of being able to develop that and innovate that. And your script for Hamlet 5050 is still changing. I had a note from Peter today about another line being changed. That's right. I just want to add in a local fun fact. I like fun facts, and it's a fact about our town. if you go downtown in, South Bend, and go to the Morris Performing Arts Center downtown, some of you in Modding, you know it. students on campus often never get near it. but if you go round the back, There's an alleyway, a perfectly safe alleyway. I don't encourage people to go into alleyways. But there is a very long mural that was painted on the back wall of the Morris Performing Arts Center. And it's got characters from stage and screen. There's somebody out of Cats. There's Willy Wonka. There's Elvis Presley. Et cetera, et cetera. And there's one Shakespeare image. And guess what? It's Hamlet, and it's Hamlet holding the skull, because that's our iconic notion of what Hamlet is. Except, I recognize the photo that this particular image is taken from. And it's a photo of a Hamlet in 1900, the year 1900. Played by the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. And I love the fact that's the one Shakespeare image in this long mural. The mural is about 50 yards long. It's a really wonderful piece of work. And I encourage you, next time you're downtown in South Bend, go and have a look. It's called Ernie's Alley. and you enter it, beside the LaSalle Grill and around the back of the Morris Performing Arts Center. I can't believe you're only telling me this now. I have to go home to New York tomorrow. That just makes me go, South Bend was the right place to premiere Hamlet 5050, wasn't it? But this history of women playing Hamlet is a long history. There's a very fine scholarly study behind it. Tony Howard, which is simply called Women Playing Howard. because so many women did play the role. And, okay, I get what that does. But, it's still, I am a woman playing a male role. And I've got to think into this as I'm showing a man. I'm not showing a woman. Now, there are, there is one other way of doing it. And, an extraordinary silent movie. Called Hamlet, starring the great Danish actress Astrid Nielsen. and it's based on a very weird little book by an American independent scholar. I, somehow when you put the word independent with scholar it always means they're slightly weird. but this is, somebody called Edward Vining who claims to have solved the mystery of Hamlet. Wow. And the answer is, Hamlet isn't just in touch with his feminine side. Hamlet actually is a woman. And this film explores this. not by playing Hamlet. It's playing a myth version of Hamlet. In which as Gertrude gives birth, there's a battle going on. and news comes that Hamlet Senior may have been killed in the battle. And she gives birth and it's a daughter. Oh no, that's not going to be good for the royal house. let's just announce that it was a son. Hamlet grows up as a woman playing a man. I won't, no more spoilers, if you get a chance to watch this, it's a really wondrous film. And Aston Nielsen's performance is stunning. it's fascinating, as you were talking about so many women having embodied Hamlet. I would say, to go back to your question about business and the workplace, we need one job. Exactly. And that's why it matters. That's why it's important to have a new idea, a new innovation in Shakespeare. Because that's one job. Yup. And I think of Fiona Shaw playing Richard II. Oh, yes. Fiona Shaw played Richard II, but all the other male roles were played by male actors. That doesn't change the workplace. That's right. So what you're going to be seeing tonight is a new way of thinking about Hamlet, but it'll feel like Hamlet. I promise that there's, it's Shakespearean, it feels like Hamlet. It doesn't, I think you'll be surprised at how much it feels unchanged, but I think you'll also be surprised at how much opens up, how much perspective. How much different ways of thinking, even in yourself, may show up tonight by noticing the little bit of, alterations that have come forth in this magnificent project. So I want to thank you all for joining us. I want to make sure you get to the show. And thank you, Peter and Vanessa, for joining me. We hope you have a great night.