Saturday, November 20, 2010

Green Eggs and Hamlet

Reed Brown, an old friend and colleague, wrote a short play that combines Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss to create a new sort of Hamlet. Very, very funny. We're performing it at a benefit party for an organization that helps women getting out of prison.

We rehearsed this afternoon for the first time. I was amazed that one of the actors from our 2000-2002 production of Hamlet couldn't finish many of the most famous quotations, "To thine own self ..." and "Frailty, they name is ..." I knew most of the famous lines before I ever read Hamlet. I was finally able to really sit down and read the play when I was thirty, and I laughed out loud at all the lines I knew. For me, Hamlet was just a series of quotations hung on a very complicated plot.

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