Hamlet 2002

... Style ... tableaux vivans = living pictures [ named and numbered ]

... colors: white, black, gray, red...

... sounds?

... R&G, USA : two businessmen and meaning of (American?) life. [ director's notes ]

... Director’s Thoughts about Sir Tom and his Writing

"All that is straight lies," the dwarf murmured contemptuously. "All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle." Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Postmodernism is old, but Americans still do not know what PoMo is, even though they’ve already had two post modern presidents. When students ask me about the postmodern, I tell them to read "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead". First written in 1964, then re-written in 1966 and 68, Tom Stoppard, “dove into the world's most famous play, Hamlet, and retold it from the point of view of two bumbling support players. The entire world is a stage, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern play their part, finding themselves unwitting pawns in history's greatest tragedy (was written about the 1990 movie based on the play and directed by Stoppard himself)”.

This play is a “pastiche” of Shakespeare and Beckett and represents the game of the present with the past, when the present has no plans for future -- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as two characters in "Waiting for Godot" do not understand the world no matter how hard they try to think about life.

A darling of college stage, the script has it all, the good and bad of modern theatre (witty language and weak plot). "Comedy about Tragedy" is how I define the genre for myself.

For Lev Tolstoy, all of Shakespeare was nonsensical for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the action makes no sense {What do you mean by nonsense and why doesn’t the action make sense?} And what about life for Stoppard? Or for me... all nonsense? Oh, this is perhaps, the most dramatic (absurd and thus tragic?) part of "to be and not to be"!

Free will and destiny ? -- no, we are afraid of classic dictionary! Our heroes avoid decisions.

... is it about us?

You bet.

Re-read Hamlet... and then you would see this play as never ending dialogue about ouselves.

The Summary of Hamlet
This drama is one of the great tragedy themed plays by William Shakespeare. The themes of the plot cover indecision, revenge and retribution, deception, ambition, loyalty and fate. Prince Hamlet mourns both his father's death and his mother, Queen Gertrude's remarriage to Claudius. The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to him and tells him that Claudius has poisoned him. Hamlet swears revenge. He kills the eavesdropping Polonius, the court chamberlain. Polonius's son Laertes returns to Denmark to avenge his father's death. Polonius's daughter Ophelia loves the Prince but his behaviour drives her to madness. Ophelia dies by drowning. A duel takes place and ends with the death of Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet.

* shakespeare : playscript analysis

theatre theory pages :

shake

s.history : shakespeare's chronicles and shakespeare as our real history

scomedy

... dict.txt : Random juxtaposition refers to the stimulation of creativity in problem solving, design or other creative pursuit by confronting two unrelated concepts or objects, usually the goal or problem to be solved on the one hand and a randomly selected object or concept on the other.

[left]

... director's notebook.

FAQ

HamletWEB 2002 FNQ : Never asked Questions

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Synopsis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_&_Guildenstern_Are_Dead

The play concerns the misadventures and musings of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from William Shakespeare's Hamlet who are friends of the Prince, focusing on their actions while the events of Hamlet occur as background. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is structured as the inverse of Hamlet; the title characters are the leads, not minor players, and Hamlet himself has only a small part. The duo appears on stage here when they are off-stage in Shakespeare's play, with the exception of a few short scenes in which the dramatic events of both plays coincide. In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are used by the king in an attempt to discover Hamlet's motives and to plot against him. Hamlet, however, mocks them derisively and outwits them, so that they, rather than he, are killed in the end. Thus, from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's perspective, the action in Hamlet is largely nonsensical.

The two characters, brought into being within the puzzling universe of the play by an act of the playwright's creation, often confuse their names, as they have generally interchangeable yet periodically unique identities. They are portrayed as two clowns or fools in a world that is beyond their understanding; they cannot identify any reliable feature or the significance in words or events. Their own memories are not reliable or complete and they misunderstand each other as they stumble through philosophical arguments while not realizing the implications to themselves. They often state deep philosophical truths during their nonsensical ramblings, however they depart from these ideas as quickly as they come to them. At times Guildenstern appears to be more enlightened than Rosencrantz; at times both of them appear to be equally confounded by the events occurring around them.

After the two characters witness a performance of The Murder of Gonzago — the story within a story in the play Hamlet — they find themselves on a boat taking prince Hamlet to England with the troupe that staged the performance. During the voyage, they are ambushed by pirates and lose their prisoner (Hamlet) before resigning themselves to their fate.