DENMARK: SINGAPORE DIRECTOR OG KENG SEN PRODUCES INTERNATIONALLY DIVERSE VERSION OF SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET AT KRONBERG CASTLE

Record ID: 393012

  • Title: DENMARK: SINGAPORE DIRECTOR OG KENG SEN PRODUCES INTERNATIONALLY DIVERSE VERSION OF SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET AT KRONBERG CASTLE
  • Date: 19th August 2002
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF PERFORMERS IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE CASTLE (10 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 3rd September 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
  • Country: Denmark
  • Topics: Entertainment,General
  • Reuters ID: LVADXHQQ047J8SBYYQBVZEP6HZV9
  • Story Text: Shakespeare's tale of Hamlet - the troubled Prince of Denmark - is staple fare for directors and actors the world over - and leading modern theatre director Ong Keng Sen is the latest to present his unusual take on the play without casting any actor in the lead role. The cutting edge production is showing in Copenhagen's Kronborg Castle, the castle where Shakespeare imagined his protagonist to live.
    Part of the second biennial Kulturbro (Bridge of Culture) festival, Search: Hamlet is anticipated as one of this year's highlights. The work of remarkable Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen - who is counted among the world's top 5 modern theatre directors - the piece features a cast of reknowed international artists and dancers skilled in a range of disciplines from a dazzling array of cultures.
    Carlotta Ikeda, a butho dancer takes the part of the ghost, the mask-dancer from Bali Wayan Didia plays a breathtaking Claudius and the classical Thai dancer Pichet Klunchon is a powerful Gertrud. Hamlet himself however is represented only by lighting effects.
    "I am trying to present Hamlet as honestly as I can and right now I feel that no one can adequately represent Hamlet, maybe because I think Hamlet is a very important symbol, and I feel that to put an Asian face on him, or a European face is also a very loaded question, or loaded issue, so I prefer that he is absent, and because he is absent we start to think about who is our Hamlet and what does he mean today, and I think that it is very daring to to Hamlet in Denmark, in Kronborg without a Hamlet at all, but I think this is what artists and theatremakers must continue to do, we must continue to challenge the perceptions of audiences so that audiences no longer go to the theatre just to consume and just to be entertained but they constantly ask themselves, what is the purpose of theatre today?"
    Set in the actual castle where Shakespeare set his play, this is a truly site-specific work, with the first act taking place throughout the castle.
    "I think that Search:Hamlet is a very sensual experience, it is really very sensory, the first part of the evening the audience "travel" to many different sites in the castle. They will go into the dungeons or the casements, they will go into different rooms like the chapel, the ballroom, the wine cellar, and each room has a special flavour, has a special atmosphere and I think that the audience is made to feel almost like they are in a film set and they are experience a space and a time of long ago. "
    The second act, a spectacle of light and sound, takes place in the courtyard, and is expected to be presented in other venues.
    "Search:Hamlet is constructed to be two parts, the first part is a response of Kronborg and that is very site specific, the second part which happens after the interval is more of a full performance, with a prologue, five books, or five chapters and an epilogue, so I think that when we go on tour we would subsequently perform the second half, and the second half is about one hour forty minutes so it is a performance in itself."
    Hamlet has not been performed at Kronborg Castle since 1979, but prior to that had been performed there regularly, most notably by Sir Lawrence Olivier in 1937. But for Ong Keng Sen the importance of the location added impetus to completely re-examine the piece,.
    "Search:Hamlet is about searching for a new meaning for Hamlet, it is about rethinking Hamlet, so for me in renaming it Search: Hamlet is also about searching ourselves and searching for the meaning of Kronborg today, searching for a new meaning in our lives and in Shakespeare's original script."
    Ong Keng Sen first attracted the attention of the public and critics alike with his 1997 reworking of King Lear, and this current inspirationally original interpretation of Hamlet has firmly established him as a leading light of contemporary theatre.
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