Virtual Home of
Russell Eagling

www.russelleagling.com

One of the more unusual things I was asked to do this semester was to direct Hamlet.  The team of students had already been working on the play for several months and I was asked to come in and lend my expertise to the show.  This was a little daunting at first - but the cast all turned out to be very keen and seemed to value everything I said very highly.  This was also very daunting!

They had prepared a script that was a mix between the original Shakespeare and something more understandable for a audience of English learners.  "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be" became "be neither a borrower or a lender"  "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" became "Something is rotten in our country" etc etc.  The number of scenes was also obviously dramatically cut.  In the end the show ran for about 50 minutes.  We followed Sir Larry O's example and completely did away with Fortinbras and a number of other characters.

A week before we previewed a few scenes to a largely bemused audience in the main park in Hankou.  What didn't help was the microphones that everyone had to carry.  Luckily we managed to get round this problem for the show itself.

This kept me very busy. It didn't help, of course, that I was also writing and acting in The Wizard of Oz at the same time.  It all meant that lots of the marking that I was hoping to get out of the way wasn't done very quickly.  But I have learnt my lesson on this.  I should be more careful when giving out assignments and asking for 1,000 word assignments is probably a silly idea!

Below are some pictures from rehearsals and from the time we took it into a park.