The plays of William Shakespeare are easily some of the most culturally influential pieces of art in history. Since Shakespeare's death, his works have been adapted, transformed and altered in myriad ways, producing a rich body of interpretations, each capturing a different facet of the Bard's genius. Productions have ranged from purist renditions that strive for historically correct performances to freewheeling adaptations that recast Shakespearian works in different settings and time periods. Tonight, the Tufts 3Ps will be performing one of the most radical reinterpretations of Shakespearian drama: "Hamletmachine" (1977) by HeinerMüller.
The play is a postmodernist drama in five acts. Director Jonny Hendrickson, a senior and drama major, chose the play after reading it in his freshman year in a drama class.
"This is the first time I have been in charge, and it was a very physical process," he said. "I used a lot of techniques I learned from my abroad program and as an ensemble member of Double Edge Theatre, which actually started at Tufts."
The play's development started just five weeks ago, requiring a streamlined rehearsal process.
The 3Ps is Tufts oldest student-run group on campus, having been founded in 1910. The Ps in question stand for Pen, Paint and Pretzel: "Pen" for the art of writing, "Paint" for the art of design and "Pretzel" for the standard snack for the audience. 3Ps puts on student-directed and -produced non-musical plays encompassing one major production and two workshops per semester. Some involved in the organization have no formal theater experience; others are drama majors. Still, 3Ps is open to everyone who has a passion for the stage. The group's decision to take on Müller's play presented the group with a unique production experience.
"Hamletmachine" is one of the most subjective, challenging plays of the later 20th century. The minimalist structure of the play rests on a series of monologues delivered by Hamlet and a few other characters. With relatively few stage directions and virtually no description of what the stage should look like, "Hamletmachine" presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities for any theater group. The absence of overt guidelines for the production allowed the 3Ps to design the show from the ground up, an opportunity that set designer Cara Guappone took full advantage of.
"[Jonny Hendrickson] said, ‘we don't have a set designer,' and I said, ‘I want to design the set. I know what it should look like.' My catchphrase for the show was ‘post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland,' because a lot of the images evoke something desolate and destroyed. When you picture ancient civilizations, they have ruins of temples. This is what will be left if life were gone now," Guappone said as she looked out at the stage, where piles of gutted computers, radios, televisions and other electronic devices were strewn about the stage.
At only nine pages in length, the script for "Hamletmachine" features relatively small amounts of speaking and formal content, requiring new levels of physicality from the performers, who must maintain their stage presence without talking, often for several minutes at a time. Guappone took this critical aspect of the play into account.
"I wanted the space to feel like a crate, and there isn't much in the way [of actors] — so much of the piece is about the movement and the space the actors are creating, so I wanted a space that was uncomfortable. The entryways are a little blocked, but there's still space for them to deal with open rehearsing," she said.
Senior Scot Istvan, who oversaw stage lighting, also chose to emphasize the movement and special qualities of the actors' performances.
"["Hamletmachine" was] a little different from what you'd normally do. Normally you worry about faces and expressions [as a lighting technician], but this is a movement piece, so there is more emphasis on movement. It's like a combination of dance and theater," he said.
With such a freeform structure to play with, the production process for "Hamletmachine" was very unique. Junior Ryan Willison, who plays Hamlet in the show, described the atmosphere of rehearsals as highly collaborative and open-minded.
"Jonny was very clear from day one that we would build it together. I would show up and we would work on ten ways to say one line, or he would say the lines for me and I would move in response and we would build these physical textures, and from that, the lines would make sense. It was wild," Willison said.
Willison found the metafictive aspects of the play particularly liberating. While most plays try to engross readers in a fictional world and suspend their disbelief, "Hamletmachine" readily acknowledges its fictional, dramatic status. At several points throughout the play, the actors themselves admit to playing their characters, purposefully disrupting the immersion most plays seek to foster in their audience.
"What was incredible for me was when I realized I wasn't necessarily playing a character. I was just a vessel for these ideas and images. It freed me up to just respond to the play instead of worrying the whole time, ‘Am I playing Hamlet correctly?' That [role] was something I could define differently for myself every night," Willison said.
Cast members Hannah Wellman, a senior, and Maya Grodman, a junior, found the procedure to be taxing but rewarding at the same time.
"It was a uniwque rehearsal process. A lot of productions start with a read-through, character production and a discussion of the story," Grodman said. "We didn't do any of that."
"The actors would come in and move in any way that they wanted, and, if Jonny liked something, he would say to put that in. It was an ensemble process, and we became very close as a cast and developed a strong sense of trust which is important in this kind of show," Wellman added.
Much of this physicality was palpable during the dress rehearsal, when actors would match their body movements with the tone of particular lines of dialogue, or take subtle cues from the script or their fellow performers' stage presence.
"We move about the space and try to fill it in different ways. Jonny is very free with what he lets us do," Wellman said. "Sometimes we take specific lines which are important to us, sometimes you get in a dialogue with another person which develops. It's good because you get to say lines in the play you wouldn't have otherwise said and works as a way to get grounded in your space and mindset."
Grodman encourages the audience to come in with an equally open mind.
"This will be something they have never seen before in a wonderful and intense way and we hope everyone will be open with what we have to say. I think people are going to see a lot of meaning and a lot of depth in what we're doing. Because the play is so abstract different people are going to take away their own individual meanings from what we're doing."
"Hamletmachine" is open to a range of interpretations. Since the script itself is so short, the productions that have been put on have varied in length, set design and characterizations. Some productions have clocked in at over three hours long, whereas the version 3Ps is performing is only one hour.
The play is running March 8, 9 and 10 at 8 p.m. in Balch Arena Theater, Aidekman Arts Center. Tickets are $7 and are on sale at the box office at the Balch Arena Theater Box office. Anyone interested can stop by or call 617-627-3493.
