hamlet (the melancholy dame)

Notes from the Director

Isn't it interesting that when we speak of troubled youth, we always think specifically of boys? Males and females may face different issues as they try to find a place in the world, but they all need guidance, understanding, and a voice of their own. What happens, then, for a young prince in a court where the adult role models focus on war, murder, politics, and their own sex lives instead of the development of their young people? What a burden for him to be put in the position, before he finds his own destiny, to be forced to avenge his father's destiny. Critics have pointed out that Hamlet is a renaissance rationalist protagonist caught in a revenge tragedy, trapped and expected to act in a world he neither understands nor respects. Ophelia, too, is a fish out of water in this old order, an intelligent, multifaceted individual stuck in a society that demands she follow rigid gender roles. Their elders and some of their peers have adjusted to or benefit from these rigid roles, but Hamlet and Ophelia can not or will not accept the limited roles offered to them, and that refusal brings about their destruction.

And yet, this is not only a tragedy of youth. The play is called Hamlet, but in the course of the action, each character bows to his or her own tragedy. In a good play, important characters and situations are further illuminated by a parallel or mirror elsewhere in the script; in this great play, each character serves as a mirror for each other, each situation for many more. In their very public court life, Denmark's denizens guard their secrets jealously, but the mirrors amplify each other, even as they crack. In the funhouse that is Shakespeare's Denmark, all are searching but finding no answers, all are trying vainly to be heard, and all roads lead to desperation. We love these characters as if they were our own family members, and we always hope they will make it out alive, just this once.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is so beloved that we all want to hate any production of it for its sheer arrogance in attempting to touch our own images of the play. I find great freedom in the fact that we all, in our collective emotional memory, fully understand Hamlet in all its forms and meanings, but no one can claim to have realized its perfection on stage. All of you entered this theatre with your own visions of this monumental tale, and our conflicting, competing visions tumble together to create the experience we will share tonight. This production will fulfill some of your expectations and destroy others. Thank you for entrusting us with the great honor of adding one more mirror to the funhouse!

The Project

Woman's Will is known for its all-female but otherwise straightforward productions of Shakespeare's plays, performed in neighborhood parks across the greater Bay Area. Now we're adding to our repertoire and moving indoors for the Fall. We're tired of seeing the same old boring Hamlets year after year and we bet you are too, so we're spicing things up with a very physical, suspenseful, and yes, even scary version of the western world's most resonant tale.

Woman's Will's stark adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet strips the Bard's magnificent words down to reveal a lean, mean, and surprisingly active play. Traditional Eastern movement styles meet Western sensibilities in this 1 1/2 hour look at family relationships in the context of a country in crisis. What happens when communication breaks down so far that only physical action will suffice, and what happens when the only possible agent of change is unable to act? Our ensemble's specialized movement skills bounce off director Erin Merritt's frenetic vision to create a roller-coaster ride of a show. What you see will gnaw at you like Hamlet's own conscience.

Woman's Will was formed in 1998 to present Shakespeare's work from a new perspective, to provide opportunities for female theatre artists to work together in a supportive yet challenging environment, and to expand the boundaries in which both audiences and artists see themselves. We perform free and low cost shows in accessible sites and provide low cost classes for women and girls. We offer our audiences a vital, vibrant, and visceral entry into Shakespeare's world in a comfortable, low-key environment, and we do it with a twinkle in our eye. Come see what all the fuss is about!

Bios

• Erin Merritt (Director)
  • was most recently seen with Woman's Will playing the lecherous Lucio in this past summer's Measure for Measure. Artistic Director of Woman's Will, Ms. Merritt directed our inaugural production, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and performed the title role in our 1999 production of Coriolanus. Other directing highlights include Brecht's A Man's a Man and Heiner Müller's Quartet. She has studied, taught, and performed with The Berkeley/California Shakespeare Festival, The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, The Carmel Shake-speare (sic) Festival, and Massachusetts' Shakespeare & Company, among others. As an actor, she has been seen in the Bay Area with such companies as Shotgun Players, Center Rep, Pacific Repertory Theatre, and Unconditional Theatre. Regional theatre credits include The Woman in Scotland Road, Li'l Bit in How I Learned to Drive, and
    the title role in Sylvia.
• Ellen Brooks (Claudius)
  • has an extensive background in physical theatre with companies ranging from the internationally known San Francisco Mime Troupe (commedia dell' arte) and Tuju Taksu (masked dance) to Theatre of Yugen (classical Japanese Kyogen and Noh). For twelve years she toured nationally with Theatre of Yugen performing not only Kyogen, but also American premieres of contemporary Japanese plays (Inugami, The Dog God, and The Dressing Room, and fusion productions of Noh Christmas Carol and The Imposter (Tartuffe). She has studied with Yuriko Doi, Akira Matsui (Kita Noh), Haruyoshi Ito (Shintaido) and many other Japanese masters, appearing with Matsui in his Noh version of Samuel Beckett's Rockabye. In the Western repertory, recent roles include Mrs. Stella Campbell in Dear Liar, Sappho in Afternoons with Sappho, Agave in Euripides' Bacchae, Emily in The Last Hunt, and Constance in She Stoops to Conquer, as well as solo performances in One Woman's Shakespeare, Diary of a New York Lady, and In Defense of Lady Macbeth. Ms. Brooks also works in stage direction and lighting design throughout California at such companies as Stage Three, University of San Francisco, Marin Theatre Company, Lamplighters, and The New Conservatory. Twice awarded the designation of Artist in Residence by the California Arts Council, Ms. Brooks founded the West Coast Conference for Women in Theatre and has a Masters in Theatre from San Francisco State University. She lives in San Rafael, California.
• Gillian Chadsey (Hamlet)
  • is an actress, producer and teacher who has studied theatre and movement with many theatre artists and companies across the US and Europe, including Anne Bogart and The SITI Company (New York), Gennadi Bogdanov (Moscow), The Living Theatre (Germany), Teatr Osmeiga DNIA, and Teatr Cinema (Poland). Locally, she spent 5 years with San Francisco's The Medea Project, Theatre for Incarcerated Women. She is also the Artistic Director of The Train Station, a non-profit actor's gym dedicated to cultivating the work of local, national, and international performers and teachers. She has appeared in performances with The Dead Horse Ensemble, Art Street Theatre, and, most recently, as the Skriker in Shotgun Players' production of The Skriker.
• Nora El Samahy (Laertes, Guildenstern)
  • Having recently closed The Shotgun Players' production of The Jungle Book, Ms. El Samahy is pleased to be playing a human again-- and especially a man. Due to the complete lack of men at her college, she was fortunate to play several men in various Shakespeare productions there. This feels like coming home.
• Elica Funatsu (Ophelia, Ensemble)
  • is excited to make her debut with Woman's Will. She has just completed a run of Macbeth with Shakespeare at Stinson, in which she played a Witch and Fleance. Theater credits in the Bay Area include Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival), Ariel in The Tempest (Shakespeare at the Beach), a sly Mosquito in Sumo Wrestling with a Mosquito (Theater of Yugen, national tour), Circe in The Odyssey (Shotgun Players), Amiranah in a staged reading of The Wives of the Magi (Magic Theater), and Wandering Ghost (KaiHsin Productions), which was chosen Best Showcase Production of 1997 by The Bay Guardian. Her Shakespeare credits in Tokyo include Viola in Twelfth Night and Tranio in The Taming of the Shrew. Film credits include A World Free From Nuclear Weapons, a documentary for the 50th anniversary of the Atomic bomb, and the title role of Mikki in Mikki and Jimmy. Ms. Funatsu has studied with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Royal Academy of Dancing.
• Rocelyn Halili (Horatio, Ensemble)
  • graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Dramatic Art, where she was the recipient of the Mark Goodson Award and the Rosalyn Schneider Eisner Prize for Acting in two consecutive years. She studied Contemporary French Drama in L'Université de Bordeaux III and worked with Peter Sellars' Invisible World in Berkeley. Some of her favorite roles include Enos in John Fisher's Medea-the Musical, Riddler in A Hard Heart, Butcher and Claxton's Wife in Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Hummel in Ghost Sonata, Lady Nijo and Win in Top Girls, Hester in Equus, and Tituba in The Crucible. She is now a member of San Francisco's Crowded Fire theatre company, and she was most recently seen as Pompey and Claudio in Woman's Will's summer 2000 production of Measure for Measure.
• Madeline Lacques-Aranda (Polonius, Ensemble)
  • is a Woman's Will Company Member who performed the role of Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Woman's Will's first summer show. She is also a member of Eastenders Repertory Compnay, for whom she recently appeared in the title role of Brecht's The Jewish Wife and as the Burglar's Wife in Dario Fo's The Virtuous Burglar. For Eastenders, she has also played Edna in Waiting for Lefty and Esther in Tony Kushner's Ambivalence, and you may also have seen her as the Sultana in The Lawyer's Tale for Geoffrey Chaucer and Co. She is a storyteller, teacher, and martial artist who specializes in Suzuki movement, karate, and performance of the son jarocho music and dance of Vera Cruz.
• Mantra Ben-Ya'akova Plonsey (Rosencrantz, Ensemble)
  • knew from age four that she had to get into show business. At six she directed her first extravaganza, featuring all the under-five neighborhood girls, belly-dancing, swathed in hip-level scarves. Since then, it's been rock n' roll, Balkan singing, dressing in drag-the same old story. She's played Rose in Gypsy at Contra Costa Theatre, and, for George Coates' world premiere of Up Your Ass, she originated the role of Russell. This long-lost play by feminist icon Valerie Solanas will re-open in 2001 at PS 122 in fabulous New York City. Hamlet will be the first time she's performed anything by the Bard since Viola at 13, and she is thrilled to be in a Shakes play that doesn't have a curse on it.
• Mary Saudargas (Gertrude, Ensemble)
  • was most recently seen as Duckling and Captain Tench in Our Country's Good at Calavaras Repertory Theatre. Ms. Saudargas is the Producing Director of the Living Arts Theatre Lab's Playback Theatre company, which improvisationally enacts the essence of audience members' stories. She is also a drama therapist, and she has used these skills to creatively enhance dramatic text locally with such companies as Signal Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, and Subterranean Shakespeare and internationally with the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.
• Carrie Smith (Fight Choreographer)
  • has studied fight choreography and performance on the East Coast with Fight Masters J. Allen Suddeth and David Leong. In the Bay Area she studied historical swordplay with Michael Cawelti and frequently collaborates with Todd Gunther. She also practices Modern Arnis, the Filipino Martial Art of fighting with sticks, machetes, and knives. Carrie has choreographed such diverse works as a sword fight for a rock video featuring the band Primus, a Wild West shoot-out enacted for a private party consisting of 100 Japanese computer executives and a recent production of King Lear. Her love of stage combat and sword fighting is a natural culmination of her powerful belief in woman's ability to overcome adversity and her fierce identification with strong women throughout time.

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