The time is out of joint.

The story of a coming of age.

Harmonious, rich family. Dad strong-handed, Mom pretty, boy bright and healthy. Dad dies, Mom re-marries, the boy can’t return to school.

Hamlet is a conservative youth, believes in the unity of family, the truth of words, in friendship, in love and God. He does not know the feeling of defeat, bitterness, hopelessness, and with them the responsibility that comes with independence. The moment of coming of age is when we realise our vulnerability, our weakness, our tragic loneliness.

When we face the world and discover distraughtly that the clear set of rules imbibed from adolescent novels are simply inapplicable to adult social conditions, something inside us breaks.

People seem pathetically small, cowardly, and dishonest. Accepting this is what we call socialisation, and opposition to it antisocial behaviour, anarchy, or infantilism.

Can we imagine another fate for this boy? No. The question is senseless to begin with.

So what’s the lesson?

That there is no lesson. Life is hard.

Árpád Schilling’s genre-creating show is an adaptation of Hamlet made with three actors in a school environment. In the performance Schilling developed the concept of Hamlet³, a play likewise performed with three actors in the Viennese Burgtheater two years previously. The show, performed in classrooms for high school audiences, is always followed by a conversation. The performance represented a breakthrough in the educational efforts of domestic performance artists; many productions were staged in schools subsequently, a festival inspired by the Krétakör production was created; and the Classroom Theatre Review (Tantermi Szinházi Szemle) supporting this kind of production was also launched.

From the second year following its premiere the show, previously played exclusively in schools, became accessible to adult audiences in various locations: canteens, gyms, ceremonial halls, community centres. The MU theatre was its permanent host venue.

“György Spiró, who back in college taught a course on Shakespearean cast consolidation, evidently facilitated devising the three-member cast solution. In most scenes the dramatic situation emerges between at most three characters; this is practical, and here’s the philosophical explanation: the tripartite unity of the soul, the spirit, and the heart. I directed not for students but for myself a production which we performed primarily to students in schools. I longed for fresh air, to break out of my familiar environment, because I felt that my world was beginning to close around me, and practically every moment was becoming predictable. At the same time this was the next stage in an aesthetic development. At first we staged our performances with scenery. Later we sought out locations whose atmosphere fitted the play. Now we’ve arrived at the third phase, in which neither scenery nor a special location plays a part in the creative process. Theatre, insofar as its message is clear, can remake any space in its own image. And in this it treats as partners its spectators, whom it considers playmates.” (Árpád Schilling)

Written by William Shakespeare
Hungarian translation by Ádám Nádasdy

Using poems of William Blake, Georg Büchner, Eminem, Allen Ginsberg, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Attila József and János Pilinszky. The Bible verse is from the Book of Judges.

CAST

Performed by József Gyabronka, Zsolt Nagy, Roland Rába

Directed by Árpád Schilling
Music: Ernő Zoltán Rubik 
Dramaturgy: Anna Veress
Assistant to the director: Péter Tóth
Production manager: Máté Gáspár

Photo: Mátyás Erdély

PRESS

• László Sz. Deme: Világos beszéd. Revizor online, 01. 07. 2008.
   
• Tamás Jászay: „HAMLET, STICH IHN AB!“ (interview). Goethe-Institut Budapest. 01. 02. 2014.
   
• Balázs Perényi: Plasztikussá tenni a gondolatot. Interview with actors of hamlet.ws, József Gyabronka and Roland Rába. Ellenfény, 2007/8-9.
   
• István Sándor L.: Együttjátszások. Round-table conference about Krétakör's hamlet.ws. Ellenfény, 2007/8-9.