Last Hamlet Rehearsal...

Today we completely finished blocking and polishing Hamlet which looks amazing! We had to make quite a few changes to the opening player movement sequence because we have lost one player however the new movements allow us to be unified; the timing is finally right! Now we are pushing Hamlet on-stage and then we lean over him towards the audience. This creates a great stage picture but also allows our movements to be in time with the loud and beating music. We spent quite a lot of time today creating pathways on the chessboard now that we have settled on our blocking. These are used after Hamlet's opening speech and they create the 'chess game' idea for the audience – we are after all; players! It has been an ongoing idea that when Lucianus is poisoning the player king the players are breathing deeply, as they do when the player king is sleeping in the dumb show. This chorus element symbolizes Hamlets beating heart and madness, and shows how his wild actions affect everybody. We also worked hard to make Lucianus and the players cackle together as if we are part of his evil tribe when poisoning the king in the play. Tomorrow is our Cue to cue rehearsal for both our five and 15 minute scenes followed by the technical dress rehearsal on Tuesday and the show on Wednesday!