Hamlet, Princesa de Dinamarca. David Geffen School of Drama, 2024

Hamlet, Princesa de Dinamarca

2023–24 SEASON SHAKESPEARE REPERTORY PROJECTS

FEBRUARY 23–24, 2024 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE James Bundy, Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean Florie Seery, Associate Dean Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Carla L. Jackson, Assistant Dean

Hamlet, Princesa de Dinamarca

By William Shakespeare Adapted and translated by

Juliana Morales Carreño and Sebastián Eddowes-Vargas Directed by Juliana Morales Carreño

Creative Team

Cast

in alphabetical order Scenic Designer

B Entsminger

Costume Designer

KT Farmer

Lighting Designer

Celia Chen

Sound Designer

Joyce Ciesil

Queen Gertrudis

Cindy De La Cruz King Claudius/Ghost

Polonius/Second Player/ Second Gravedigger

Grayson Richmond

Lucas Iverson

Hamlet

Ophelia /First Player/First Gravedigger

Laertes/Francisco/A Soldier

Nat Lopez

Caro Reyes Rivera Kamal Sehrawy

Projection Designer

Christian Killada

Production Dramaturg

“The Mousetrap” sequence uses some excerpts from Álvaro Custodio’s translation of Hamlet.

Technical Director

Content Guidance

Sebastián Eddowes-Vargas Erik Keating Fight Director

Michael Rossmy Stage Manager

Ellora Venkat

This production contains strobe lighting.

Hamlet, Princesa de Dinamarca is performed without an intermission.

This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.

Artistic

House Manager

Assistant Projection Designer

Mikayla Stanley

Assistant Costume Designer

Maza Rey

Assistant Sound Designer and Engineer

David Geffen School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.

Ke Xu

Tricie Bergmann Emilee Biles

Assistant Stage Manager

ty ruwe

Production Associate Safety Advisors

Cian Jaspar Freeman Timothy “TJ” Wildow Production Manager

Steph Burke

Production Electrician

Shannon Dodson

Projection Programmer

Wiktor Freifeld

Projection Engineer

Jason Dixon

Properties Manager

Tom Minucci Run Crew

Kino Alvarez, Gib Gibney, Rethabile Headbush, Hannah Louise Jones

Administration Associate Managing Director

A.J. Roy

Production Photographer

Yale acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.

We also acknowledge the legacy of slavery in our region and the enslaved African people whose labor was exploited for generations to help establish the business of Yale University as well as the economy of Connecticut and the United States.

The Shakespeare Repertory Projects are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process.

THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982– 1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Program from 1993 until his death in 2005.

Assistant Managing Director

Jeremy Landes

Management Assistants

Kavya Shetty Taylor Ybarra

Front image courtesy of Hosefa Tavolara (Perú). “La Institución Pide 04 (The Institution Asks 04),” from the series La Palabra del Otro (The Word of the Other). hosefatavolara.com

Algo se sigue pudriendo en Dinamarca If you are reading these lines, you may be about to see a bilingual production of Hamlet, in Spanish and English. Maybe you’ve seen it already, and you’re checking the program note just now. Maybe you are wondering why we translated the words of the Bard into another language, when these brilliant actors could perfectly well do it in English. After all, they are the best actors in the world, tanto en lo trágico como en lo cómico; en lo histórico como en lo pastoral. My first response is bueno, ¿por qué no?

The story of Hamlet is well known: in a Denmark in constant war, Claudius kills his brother King Hamlet. He takes his throne and rules the kingdom with his new wife Gertrude, Hamlet’s widow. Prince Hamlet was the next in the line of succession, but he is dispossessed of the crown. Now he must discover what happened to his father and confront the traitor, so he pretends to be mad to find out. Or is he actually mad? ¿O es el duelo que le corroe? Is he inheriting generational trauma? How can one be sane in a state as rotten as this Denmark?

Nuestra Hamlet no es la Hamlet de William, porque la hemos hecho nuestra. The play stages the conflict over power and justice on the verge of war. Our Hamlet is the daughter of a Caribbean migrant. Por eso le decimos de cariño a la obra “Hamleta Latina Perrea Sola.” Her grief is not only because she lost her father but also because she cannot find rest in a foreign land. Spanish, the language of almost 42 million people living in the United States, becomes her language of intimacy, and also her weapon to survive in a hostile country. But it’s so hard to explore the depths of ourselves, even in our mother tongue. It can be even more difficult to connect with other migrants.

The language may feel the same, but some distances separating us are impossible to overcome.

Why make Hamlet bilingual, then? I’ll answer for myself. Some days I feel this world is falling apart and I don’t know what to do about it. I keep finding fear, anger, grief in my flesh. I know I am not the only one. Theater won’t save us, but it is a site to grapple with this. To feel less alone. Sobre todo para nosotres, para quienes el español es este lenguaje de la intimidad que a veces da refugio.

—Sebastián Eddowes-Vargas,

Production Dramaturg, Co-Adaptor, and Co-Translator