There will be a production of Bad Hamlet at the University of Pittsburgh’s Bellefield Hall at 2pm on Sunday April 3, 2011. The performance is in conjunction with the University’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, and admission is free and open to the public. Please see the production information page for the cast and credits pertaining to this production.
Bad Hamlet has recently been accepted to the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska, which will take place June 12 – 18, 2011. One of 72 plays selected out of almost 280 submissions, Bad Hamlet will be read as part of the Play Lab during the week long conference.
Bad Hamlet was written by Lillian DeRitter and Anthea Carns for the Playground festival at Carnegie Mellon University in the fall of 2010. With three scholars, six Hamlets, two Ophelias, and Horatio this play explores the three versions of Hamlet that date from Shakespeare’s time – the well known First Folio, the longer Second Quarto, and the much shorter First Quarto, the “Bad Hamlet.” The play also examines the role of gender, both in the text and in various performances of Hamlet throughout history. Through the performance of the interwoven texts, and the presentation of various arguments by the scholars in conjunction with these performances, Bad Hamlet serves to address the issue of the search for the “real” Hamlet, the one of Shakespeare’s intentions, in a time when conflated texts are often all that are known.
Bad Hamlet 