Hamlet Assignment
Hamlet Assignment
For this assignment, I will adopt the persona of a theater history expert who has been hired by the Shakespeare Preservation Trust to evaluate a contemporary production of Shakespeare’s great tragedy Hamlet. My job is to document and evaluate the production to determine if the trust should give the company a grant. I will need to consider how 21st century theater artists put the past in conversation with the present, and, determine if the production merits support in light of the Trust’s goals of “preserving” Shakespeare’s art, meaning, and performance traditions.
This is the production I chose:
Oregon Shakespeare 2016 (Lisa Petersen) (Rock n Roll)
Hamlet Assignment
Collect the following:
At minimum, three different reviews of the production.
At least three examples of archival evidence (artifacts — video, photographs, interviews, biography, playbill, program note, advertisement, press release, website, costume or set rendering, etc.) PLEASE NOTE Although you only NEED three reviews and three artifacts, you have to describe the production in this essay. The more sources you find, the EASIER this task will be.
Submit an annotated bibliography is due on Friday, October 19th (submitted online). You’ll follow MLA guidelines to format the document and include after each entry a simple description of the source and a prediction of how this source will help you build your argument.
Use your textbooks, the script, and our class discussions as resources to compare Shakespearean/Elizabethan public theater staging practices to the more modern production. Determine what the contemporary production keeps from the original production’s text and historical moment and what it changes.
Prepare a short report that describes how the recent production of Hamlet engages past historical practices while creating a new production designed for a specific contemporary moment. Make an argument about whether or not to support the company, and back up your opinion with specific evidence.
Remember you essay makes an argument about whether or not you should include your assigned production in the Shakespeare Preservation Trust Archive. You will answer some of the following questions about the production:
What did this particular production look/sound/feel like? What specific artistic choices did the team make? What themes/motifs/ideas were they trying to address and/or embody? (This is the production description. Everyone will answer this question.)
Hamlet Assignment
How were past practices recreated, reimagined, rejected, or embraced?
What elements from the play’s original historical context or production might the contemporary audience have experienced?
Did the theatre artists aim for so-called historical accuracy? How so?
Did the contemporary artists emphasize parallels or differences between the past and the present? How so?
Did it work? What did the critics think? (Everyone will include this part – it’s one obvious place where you use your reviews.)
The types of questions you will consider will vary depending on which production you are researching. Some of the questions you might ask include, but are not limited to:
What did this particular production look/sound/feel like? What specific artistic choices did the team make? What themes/motifs/ideas were they trying to address and/or embody? (Everyone will answer this question.)
What worked to bring this very old text to life? What didn’t work?
How were past practices recreated, reimagined, rejected, or embraced?
What elements from the play’s original historical context or production might the contemporary audience have experienced?
Did the theatre artists aim for so-called historical accuracy? How so?
Did the contemporary artists emphasize parallels or differences between the past and the present? How so?
Hamlet Assignment
Please keep in mind the following:
The end product of this is an essay, in which you need to advance a thoughtful argument. Propose a unifying idea and then offer specific evidence to support it. Your writing should focus on whether or not the contemporary production has done enough to preserve the spirit of Shakespearean theater.
You should avoid excessive plot summary in your essay. You should focus on the theatrical choices made by the specific production.
You must use direct quotes from your sources. Reference these appropriately. All drafts need an attached bibliography.
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