The debut production from newly minted local collective Good Company Theatre, Hamlet in the Other Room will be presented at RUMPUS this December.
The play is an immersive experience; part-satire, part-magic-realism. Taking place in the dressing room, corridors and performance space of RUMPUS, the audience is asked to bear witness to an ensemble of young women performing an all-female production of Hamlet.
The cast decide that the play no longer serves them, and seek to destroy it in order to create something that does. Hamlet in the Other Room is two plays running concurrently to each other.
In the dressing room, ideas and ideologies clash as the company tries desperately to wrench themselves away from traditionalism and create a risky new paradigm. On stage, the play itself goes wildly off the rails.
This play is unlike others in the fact that the audience play a role too and are invited and encouraged to move between the spaces and create their own narrative in a theatrical chose your own adventure.
Co-Producer and actor Kidaan Zelleke says she is excited to see her and her collaborators bold artistic visions come to life of one of the most recognisable plays of all time.
“I think just about everybody has seen some iteration of Hamlet and no the story well and we’re really looking forward to taking something that people think they know and pretty much turning it on its head,” said Kidaan Zelleke.
Zelleke also is looking forward to the freedom the innovative production allows to the whole cast. “As actors, we have a job that we love doing, we go out on stage and we perform, we have a script and we have blocking, but we also have a choice,” she said.
“We don’t have to go on stage and say the lines and do the show we spent 8 weeks learning, we could tell the person in the front row to stop texting.”
“Being there, sticking to the script is a choice. Hamlet in the Other Room is exactly what happens when you decide not to stick to the script,” said Zelleke.
Director: Zola Allen | Cast/Devisers: Chloe Willis, Ellen Graham, Erin Perrey, Evie Leonard, Katherine Sortini, Kidaan Zelleke, Lucy Haas-Hennessy, Mikayla Rudd & Poppy Mee | Assistant Director: Kathryn Adams | Lead Writers: Lucy Haas-Hennessy, Poppy Mee, William Shakespeare | Designers: Katherine Cooper, Bianka Kennedy | Lighting Designer: Hannah Aylett | Composer and Sound Designer: Belinda Gelhert | Technical and Creative Collaborator: Abigail Heuer | Stage Manager: Grace Calabretto | Producers: Kidaan Zelleke, Poppy Mee
Hamlet in the Other Room
RUMPUS, 100 Sixth Street, Bowden (Adelaide)
Season: 1 – 12 December 2021 (preview: 30 November)
Information and Bookings: www.rumpustheatre.org
Image: Kidaan Zelleke with Evie Leonard – photo by Jamie Hornsby