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The rebooted Dane: 'We're going to make the original look like a man of action'
We met with the director and he told us what to expect when we take our seats at this summer's hottest prequel.

We’re just so excited about finally getting to tell this story! There are so many unanswered questions in the first one. We get to explore all that stuff- the relationship between Old Hamlet and Claudius- their rivalry, where that came from. Also the precredits thing, (the showdown with Old Fortinbras- Ed), is going to kick things off in a really explosive way.

We’re really stoked to get the old favourites back- as well as Claudius, the gravediggers will make an appearance, and of course young Hamlet is there in the background. We get to shed some light on his journey. You'll notice in the teaser trailer he has a wee skull on his bib! Just some subtle stuff for the fans.
 
It’s not a spoiler to say (laughs) that the climax is the ear poisoning. We’ve had to be really... I guess respectful... with how we deal with that, its such a pivotal thing and of course everyone has their own picture of how its supposed to go! I can say though, I've seen the rough cut and they won't be disappointed, its really intense. And it should be. This is the moment when Claudius, you know,becomes Claudius, and we know the crowds will be waiting for that moment...

Shakespeare Origins: Hamlet is in cinemas in November
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Here's a thing I wrote to promote Elimination Rounds and be offensive, and a text from Drowning Bird which was done by Joel from inside a cardboard box.
YOU DON'T YOUR NEED YOUR COLOURED GOGGLES FOR THIS SHIT

Or: "Towards an Undead Theatre"

Remember how your youth group leader used to take someone hip, like Eminem, and say: "You know, there was this guy called Jesus, and he was pretty much doing what Eminem is doing, 2000 years ago, in Jerusalem.” And you believed him, right? That youth group leader sure knew how to make something old and irrelevant look new and appealing: he compared it to something you cared about. It’s an old trick, and you’ll find it works with just as well with Shakespeare, and poetry, and lots of other dead things.  In this article, I’m going to try and be like that youth group leader, only I want to tell you about theatre.  As we all know, theatre was murdered by TV and film long before we were born. Or was it? Can it be resurrected? Do we need what famous zombie director Peter Brook (11 and 12) called for: an Undead Theatre?
 
Let me begin.

There's been a lot of fuss recently about cinema realising that it can "do 3D."

No it fucking can't.  Theatre can do 3D. Effortlessly. Everything it does is totally in all directions. Look at all the dimensions. It can do smells too. At the end, the performers and you have been through something together. You know the phrase “break a leg?” Actors can break legs. In theatre, things actually happen to people and you’re there to witness it.

So forget  Avatar, taste the next big thing. You might not have heard about it. It’s not on at Readings, or the Embassy. It cost less than a million dollars to make. It’s a theatre show.
 
Binge Culture's Elimination Rounds, is, in conclusion, a theatre show. It is better than Jesus.  In it, there’s a leafblower, a feeding frenzy, a live band, and a lion mauling. People pretend to be in danger. People get sort of naked. Gravity exerts its force upon objects.  Wellington is built onstage and destroyed by a monster.

My gosh, you say, can theatre do all this? Can it really be as hip as Eminem? To which I reply: heck yes, kid, and you won’t even need your 3D glasses.

*****

You know, not all performers are naturally extroverted.
Many of them are quite shy, off the stage.
Actually, a lot of people get on the stage for the same reasons that a lot of people get drunk.
When you're on the stage,
Or on the piss,
You get to be funnier than you are in everyday life.
You get to be bolder.
More flirtatious.
You get to do things you wouldn't normally get to do.
Because people are generally more understanding when you're drunk.
Or acting.
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Few of you, I think, will even be aware of the passing on January 1st of one of theatre and performance art's most underappreciated geniuses.  I'm of course a long time admirer of Wyszchi,  so I thought I’d set myself the (daunting) task of listing the works of his which have inspired and touched me the most. So in no particular order:

-His series of Shakespearean "Absence Plays" in which the lead character (or characters as in his Romeo and Juliet (1972)), were removed, meaning that there were extended pauses where the text of their soliloquies "should" be. This cycle reached its artistic zenith with his Hamlet (1981) in which all the speaking roles were excised save for Horatio, who played his part as normal through the four hour play despite having lines in only seven scenes. Audience response was mixed, but Wyszchi countered that they didn't understand the production's "singular, troubling poignancy and cost effectiveness."

-His The Vanishing! trilogy (1973-76) explored in depth the philosophical question, familiar to all rehearsing actors, of where wallets, letters, swords, and other imaginary props "come from" during rehearsal, and where they "go" once given to other actors in the scene while blocking. He effectively asked: "when we, as actors and human beings engaged in imagined acts, give each other imagined pet rabbits onstage, and then release them because in five lines time we have to hug each other and we obviously can't have anything in our hands, where do those rabbits go, and isn't it time we paid attention to them?" 

-After the painful break-up of his marriage to Julia Wyszchi following her decade-long affair with  another man, he immediate cast them all in a three hour piece consisting entirely of the three of them on stage, being awkward and making tea for one another.  Critics praised it as "quite uncomfortable."

He is of course most famous to the public for his year-long full- immersion projects, which included:

-spending all of 1969 on public transport using a single daytripper.

-Living the entire of 1970 darwinistically.

-In 1990 he didn't speak all year and, flattered by repeated calls for an encore, repeated the work three more times. The New York Times called it "a breath of fresh air".
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In Defence of Humanity

 Without coming across all defensive, we thought we should remind readers that there are, despite what people have been saying, some pretty clear differences between humans and animals. 

Including:   


  a) We will not tricked by basic traps- ie flowers that look like other bees so that they mate with them, or eyes on butterflies that look like predators.

b) We are (usually) less hairy. We wear eyeliner. 

c) Time, clocks and watches. We understand about death, and that the sun is a very, very long way away. 

 d) We make tools, like hammers and water blasters. 

 e) We outthink our instincts. We tell lies. 

f) Art. No apes make art and if they do it looks like a Jackson Pollock, which doesn’t count. 

 g) We went to the moon. And no, the dogs and apes that went into space first don’t really count because who put them in the rockets in the first place? 

  h) Shakespeare. And especially Hamlet, though I haven’t read it.

i) We fall in actual love and only kill when there are wars or a good reason. 
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Historical context: As outlined  in Harold Bloom's book "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human," before Shakespeare, most of the emotions you recognise as “human” had not been developed or branded. Broadly: people were born, had lots of kids, and died. 
1564 Shakespeare born. Parents begin planning next child.
1585-92 “Lost years.” During this time he splintered his soul into a five part horcrux with Bacon, Marlow, de Vere and Elizabeth I.
1593 In his state of the art word laboratory, develops what he brands “love” and writes Romeo and Juliet as a marketing vehicle. Ben Jonson calls DiCaprio’s performance “histrionic.” Teenage girls disagree.
1590s Spurred by his success with “love," works through a series of increasingly well received projects such as “misogyny” “anti-semitism” and “xenophobia” all of which prove globally popular in following centuries.
1595 Begins work on his most ambitious project, "human nature". Ben Jonson sceptical.
1596 Drunk on his own success, and on a whim, builds theatre shaped like a big donut.1600 "Human nature" invented by Shakespeare and unveiled in a four hour stunt nicknamed “Hamlet”. So successful it remains largely unmodified for 400 years. Ben Jonson unimpressed.1604-10 Writes “problem plays” like Measure for Measure, fills them with problems such as wacky word puzzles, secret codes, and I-spy challenges, to give modern scholars something to do with all their time.1611 All earlier achievements dwarfed by the stage direction “exit pursued by a bear” in The Winter’s Tale.
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