The Flatwater Shakespeare Company is staging "Hamlet" for the first time in nine years. For the first time in nearly a decade, something is rotten at the Flatwater Shakespeare Company. "Hamlet," the Bard's most famous tragedy and his longest play, will get its first Flatwater treatment in nine years when it opens Thursday at the Wyuka Stables.
When you have Shakespeare in your name, "Hamlet" is rather hard to avoid for too long. "I understand this is the third (Hamlet) production that Flatwater has done, so it feels like one every decade," said Ann Marie Pollard, an assistant professor of voice, movement and acting at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who is directing the play. "It's timeless, it's deep.
There's so many themes that you can focus on." Ann Marie Pollard The ones Pollard decided to zero in on include, in part, questions about the afterlife, how the state of Hamlet's father's ghost affects religious beliefs, and explorations of sanity versus insanity. This is Hamlet, after all.
That's not to say Pollard is doing anything different with the story, she said, but it has guided some of her edits to truncate the script down to the two-and-a-half hour run time — "It's certainly a workout for Michael Pritchett-Madden," who plays Hamlet, she said. To do that, Pollard's received advice from Stephen Buhler, a UNL English professor and resident scholar at Flatwater who is also playing Polonius, who went back and forth on changes to the script. "Everything always starts with a script and deciding what text is really important and needs to stay in and what text is kind of convoluted and hard to follow, and how can we streamline it for a modern audience," she said.
"I don't necessarily think about putting my own stamp on it, but my directing style is that I consider myself to be there to support the actors and making decisions and making a space for them to play." It helps that Pollard is a voice and movement coach, which has guided her direction of the very stylized stage combat, giving "Hamlet" a distinctive feeling in terms of "physical storytelling" she said. Pollard, who was for a time an actor in Chicago after studying classical singing in college, says she enjoys not only the analytical aspect of Shakespeare but also the depth of emotion and the personality of his characters.
She got involved with Flatwater Shakespeare after moving to Lincoln in 2018, helping lead its Little But Fierce Camp for elementary school children, which did a production of "Romeo and Juliet." She later did some choreography for a "Romeo and Juliet" production that streamed for an online audience in March 2020. "I think that Shakespeare is an excellent community builder," she said.
"There's a lot of people who love theater and love Shakespeare, so it brings people together around that common love. But it's also great for education, and so it's something that can bring young folks into theater for the first time." The Wyuka Stables will be the medium for Elsinore, a staging Pollard hopes will feel reminiscent of the Globe Theater.
Indeed, it's a place where a theater production could have taken place any point in time in the past, like Elizabethan England, Pollard said. "It kind of makes sense: there's a central place that would serve as the playing area for the players, and that said, there's not an obvious backstage, those kind of modern convenient trappings of a theater," she said. "It's a beautiful historical building and it's in the center of town.
And so I think there's something really special about Flatwater Shakespeare." "Hamlet" is the the second show of Flatwater's 2024 season. "Love's Labor's Lost" kicked off the season in June, and a stage adaptation of Henry James' "Turn of the Screw" will come to the Wyuka Stables Oct.
17-20 and Oct. 24-27. Marshall Carby, the executive director of the Flatwater Shakespeare Company, moved on from that position this summer to become the executive director with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra.
Carby, who came on board for the 2022 season, posted about the move on social media last month. Jimmy Lewis is now the interim executive director. Carby had previously served as the artistic director at the historic Highlands Playhouse in Highlands, North Carolina, before he and his wife relocated to Omaha in 2019.
He is familiar with Louisiana, too, having received his master of fine arts from the University of New Orleans. What: "Hamlet" Where: Wyuka Stables, 3600 O St. When: 7 p.
m. Thursday-Aug. 25 and Aug.
29-Sept. 1. Tickets: $20 for adults, $18 for seniors 65 and older, $16 for students and $5 for kids 10 and under.
Tickets are general admission. Available at flatwatershakespearecompany.org and at the door.
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Contact the writer at [email protected] or 402-473-7225. On Twitter @HammackLJS What: "Hamlet" Where: Wyuka Stables, 3600 O St.
When: 7 p.m. Thursday-Aug.
25 and Aug. 29-Sept. 1.
Tickets: $20 for adults, $18 for seniors 65 and older, $16 for students and $5 for kids 10 and under. Tickets are general admission. Available at flatwatershakespearecompany.
org and at the door. Sales close at the door two hours before showtime. Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly! Night Editor {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
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