Arts & Life, 23 Jul 2009. Page 1

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Arts & Life
23 Jul 2009

Hamlet Ate My Brain (apparently)

Hi, all. By now, most of you know that I recently played Hamlet in an all-female adaptation of the famous Shakespeare play. With only five weeks to prepare, I spent most of my time cramming lines and going to daily 4 and 5 hour rehearsals. The massive effort this required from my poor brain seems to have sapped it of any feck it once had. At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Our director, Maggie, a theatre instructor at our local Abu Dhabi branch of the New York Film Academy, produced this version of the play in London using paid actors, so I was very honored that she entrusted me with this part. Her reworking of the play is meant to present the story through the eyes of the women involved, some of the most passive in Shakespeare's canon. Naturally, the play was shortened and all extraneous characters were removed, ie. Horatio, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Yorick, etc. The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to him in his own mind so I spoke all those lines myself. I also performed the play within the play, using large puppets. There was sword fighting; I was very mean to Ophelia and very rude to Polonius whom I strangled instead of stabbed. I tried my best to act like a guy but I'm not sure that was the point really. I would like to say it was fun but rehearsals rarely are, and I was mostly just paranoid about my lines. No one ever wanted to "run lines" with me because everything I said was a big long speech. Hamlet has the most lines of any character in any Shakespeare play. What a chatterbox.


Here are Angie, who played Laertes, Mira who was the real Polonius (I had to strangle the dummy Polonius, pictured above), and Tamar who played an amazonian Ophelia to my napoleonic Hamlet.



The staging of the show was also unusual, certainly by Abu Dhabi standards. Though we were in a small auditorium with a stage, we set the action down on the floor, with tables for the actors to sit at and chairs all around us on risers so the audience was looking down on us. There were even some bean bags in the middle for brave folks who really wanted to be part of the action. I had to step over some legs more than once and nearly kicked someone's drink over. That kind of setting is guaranteed to add intimacy to your production!


These are the dolls I used for the "play within the play". See what I have to work with here? Sheesh.



Intimacy was definitely the vibe we were going for. We only ran the show for two nights, with about 30 people each night. I thought I would be terrified with the audience so close but in the end I found that the energy really carried me through. The people who did show up were well entertained and fairly surprised by the whole thing. I found it extremely invigorating and quite the interesting summer "project". A local paper , "The National" seemed to find it interesting as well. They ran a video interview on Abu Dhabi TV and mentioned us in a news article about live theatre in the UAE. ( Hey, its a small town.)



My only cast photo. I look like an urchin and the toilet to the side is a nice effect. All I can say is I didn't take it.



The plan was, once the play was finished, I would focus on getting the family ready for our summer vacation: a few days in London and then off to the US for a couple of weeks. Let me tell you, we were the model of travel efficiency here. Boarding passes printed out, seats selected, tickets to Billy Elliott in London, Astros tickets in Houston, cars rented, hotels lined up, bags packed up, taxi on the way. Every last detail one could possibly think of, met with and dealt with. Except for one.

I was upstairs putting the final things into my carry-on bag (can I bring my knitting or not?...) when Connie called to me to come downstairs. Now he is very OCD and paranoid and always blows things out of proportion, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that something very bad indeed had come to pass. And for once he was right -- Robert's passport had expired.

How could such a thing happen? You may well ask. A child's passport is only good for five years, so his is not in sync with ours. Our visas expire in 2010, so perhaps I had that date stuck in my brain. When we returned from our vacation in January I knew his passport needed to be renewed, but in January, June seems a long time away. So, I just forgot. The only explanation I can muster is this: Hamlet ate my brain!

The rest of the evening is best not related in too much detail. It was like the stages of dying: denial, bartering, trying to cheat our way out of it, at last acceptance and getting our affairs in order. Much, much time was spent on the phone. A word to the unwise: if you think your travel plans might get screwed up, don't use Travelocity. BA wouldn't even talk to us because we had used an "agent". After much begging, admission of guilt, re-telling of our pathetic story to various call center idiots, being at one point HUNG UP ON, and just plain refusing to give up or take "you are so screwed" for an answer, Connie was finally able to get the trip pushed back for two week. They wanted to charge us $2000 extra for the privilege, but we agreed to fly through Miami and sit there all day until we fly to Houston, all for the low, low price of $500. I had to pay to not lose our frequent flyer points we used to book our flights to Tennessee. The hotels had no sense of humor at all until I told them I would rebook for two weeks later. Thank the Lord, the ticket broker in London was able to resell two of our three tickets to "Billy Elliott", and the Astros, through Ticketmaster, kindly refunded our money for 10 tickets.

The embassy says Robert's new passport ought to be ready tomorrow, but if not, we can get him an emergency passport, good for ninety days. The trip, therefore, is back on. The bloom is somewhat off the rose, but we are determined to enjoy ourselves nonetheless. There may even be dividends to our being forced to postpone for two weeks. I do believe the weather in London will be better.

There is an expression in Arabic, "inshallah", that gets tossed around here a lot. It literally means, "God willing", but people tend to use it as "well, it's in God's hands now, so don't blame me if I don't do what I said I was going to do or when I said I would". But lately, I've grown to appreciate that it really does mean, "everything is fine and will happen as it should; unless, of course, God decides differently". Though I'm not an overtly religious person, I can say to you now, inshallah , we will be flying to London on Thursday night.

I'm sorry I don't have many pictures for you this month, but here are the links to the news story and the TV interview if you didn't see them before.

Hmmm. Well, I tried, but I can't seem to perform this bit of multimedia magic. Another time perhaps.

Enjoy the last bits of summer. I will write again when I get back.

x's and o's,

Jaimie

What the heck, I'll raid the archives for you; surely I can come up with something.

My friend, Alanda, poses with the charming menehune (still nameless) at Pappasito's in Houston. It's okay, I don't think she ever reads my blog. (Cue outraged response).



It don't mean a thing if it aint got that bling. Click on photo to gaze on swarovski crystals.

Enough. Bye.