Hamlet at the Public's Newman Theater

The Public Theater, in association with St. Ann�s Warehouse present William Shakespeare's Hamlet, adapted by The Wooster Group, opening at the Public's Newman Theater on 31 Oct 2007, following previews from 9 Oct and running through to 18 Nov 2007.

The Wooster Group�s Hamlet is an archeological excursion into an icon of America's cultural past, Richard Burton�s Hamlet. This legendary1964 Broadway production was recorded in performance and shown as a film for two days only in 2000 U.S. movie houses. The idea of bringing a live theater experience to thousands of simultaneous viewers in different cities was trumpeted as a new form called "Theatrofilm".

The Group's Hamlet attempts to reverse this process, reconstructing a hypothetical theater piece from the fragmentary evidence of the edited film, like an archeologist inferring an improbable temple from a collection of ruins. Channeling the ghost of the 1964 performance, the Group descends into a kind of madness, intentionally replacing its own spirit with the spirit of another.

Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte, Hamlet features Scott Shepherd as Hamlet. Kate Valk as Gertrude and Ophelia, Ari Fliakos as Claudius and Dominique Bousquet, Alessandro Magania, Daniel Pettrow, Bill Raymond, Casey Spooner and Judson Williams.