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Hello, from Hamlet’s resident dramaturg! What is the dramaturg, you might ask? The dramaturg for a production is the researcher and historian, the one that brings the concept for the show together with the history and research necessary to create a cohesive thought that can be communicated to the actors and the audience.  For SBU’s production of Hamlet, it was imperative that we melded the 1920s, Mardi Gras, gender-swapped version of the show to the classical Shakespearean drama that is known and loved by you, the audience.

COVID-19 made its entrance into the process several months after the decision to produce and adapt Hamlet had been made, creating the need to displace the show in a setting where masks could be worn for the safety of the cast and audience, but still fit within the concept. This is where New Orleans Mardis Gras came into play. The costumes and masks for our production are based off of the traditional masked balls that are thrown during Mardi Gras celebrations. In addition, during the 1920s in New Orleans the belief in Voodoo was common, much like the belief in magic during the time that Shakespeare was writing (i.e. the ghost of Hamlet’s father), which was a concept that needed to be accepted within the world of the play for the plot to be believable. 

Hamlet is about the choices we make and how they affect those around us.  Everyone has choices that they make everyday, even choosing to do nothing at all is making a choice. Hamlet is faced with a situation where the line between right and wrong is no longer clear and the audience is left to decide if she made the correct choice in the end. Today we are challenged with the need to choose what we believe to be right and wrong, even though we are opposed on both sides of an argument, everyone wanting us to side with their ways of thinking. We often think of our choices as ones that are “correcting injustice,” as Hamlet’s director Jonathan Wehmeyer stated in his concept for the production. The issue with this way of thinking then becomes, who decides what is just and unjust? How do we wrestle with the choices that we have made and the consequences that have come from them? This is the question that is being asked in SBU Theatre’s production of Hamlet. 

Elizabeth Coulter - Dramaturg