WRITTEN AND DIRECTED: Avra Sidiropoulou
PERFORMED by Elena Pellone
SET-COSTUME DESIGN: Emmanouela Vogiatzaki-Krukowski
VIDEO ART: Artemis Tzavra-Bulloch
MUSICAL COMPOSITION: Vanias Apergis
VOCAL PARTS CREATOR: Muriel Louveau
GUEST APPEARANCE: Eric Nicholson
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE: Alessandra Bonetti
ASSISTANT DIRECTORS: Julia Kogkou, Katia Makrykosta
LIGHTING CONSULTANT: George Sifakis
SET-COSTUME DESIGN ASSISTANT: Prokopis Prokopiou
PRODUCTION: Persona Theatre Company (Greece)
August 22, 2022, 9 p.m.
There is not one single reading of Hamlet; Enter Hamlet (written and directed by Avra Sidiropoulou) is a multimedia piece for one actor, a play of ghosts, by whom the titled hero is surrounded and whom he is both running away from and chasing after. The plot centers around Hamlet’s quest for peace and a sense of belonging, as he is recollecting the main events of his life, in constant dialogue with his past. The character moves from place to place –a train, a deserted city square, a ballroom—among others, where he meets with random people, variously identifying in them family members, friends, lovers and rivals, as he moves forward towards an inevitable end. The illusion of movement and progression is captured in a series of fleeting visual impressions, while Hamlet becomes a lens through which we experience the intensity of familial betrayal, insatiable sexual desire, self-sabotage, relentless introspection, and a refusal to let go. Whether Hamlet is a depressed good-for-nothing, an intellectual visionary or a whimsical (anti) hero is not the really the issue here: he morphs from one persona to the other, a victim and a victimizer, in his wavering between utopic delusion and pragmatism. Building on the existentialist outlook of the original, the play contemporizes its perennially philosophical interrogations, and also features an episodic structure with a pseudo-Aristotelian ending, clearly suggesting that where one sees an end, one should also trace beginnings.
This solo production by Athens-based Persona Theatre Company in collaboration with the artistic team of Irish company RFSAT brings one actor (Elena Pellone) right at the middle of the stage, enclosed in his past memories as represented by three screens, projecting key moments and mental landscapes of the character’s life. These places –remembered, imagined and anticipated—are gradually taking over and Hamlet is swept into this world of ghosts, finally embraced in an act of (intermedial) catharsis.
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