The Dreamers Ensemble will present “Hamlet: A Ghost Story” this weekend at the Park Theater in Jaffrey. The Dreamers will present four shows: Friday night, Saturday afternoon and evening, and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Eve Pierce, co-director of the show and founder of the Dreamers Ensemble, said the Dreamers’ production of “Hamlet” has “many, many layers.”
“This show is a ghost story. It’s a haunting, and it’s the story of how that spirals out of control,” Pierce said. “There’s a reason the subtitle of ‘Hamlet’ is ‘ ‘A ghost story.’ It’s about ghosts, it’s about grief, it’s about loss. This show is kind of our take on the ritual of theater and storytelling that we all sit around a fire and tell each other scary stories; and then we put all these other layers into it, and we make it sad and weird and really meaningful.”
The Dreamers’ version of “Hamlet” is set in a contemporary attic, with actors surrounded by mementos of times past.
“In our version of the show, we’re in an old, abandoned space covered in dust, and we’re using what we have to tell the story – a sword might not always be a sword, a letter may be a box of old greeting cards,” Pierce said. “We thought, what furniture would be left up in an old attic? So we have a yellow armchair that my cat has been using as a scratching post for years; we have some old garden furniture that has started to rust. Using this setting, we wanted to explore the age of the story, how old it really is; how the story itself is kind of covered in dust.”
Pierce says each cast member contributed items that represent personal memories or items associated with people they have lost.
“We wanted to reflect on grief throughout this play, and how that affects you, and the memories attached to that. We have two chairs from each of our stage managers’ late grandmothers. We’ve been trying to work in little pieces of loved ones who have passed away as part of the props and the sets and the costumes. So there are all these ‘ghosts’ littered throughout the show,” Pierce said.
The set and the props have evolved as the cast has rehearsed the show over the past three months.
“Some of the clothes are like, ‘Oh, this was your grandmother’s in the 70’s,” and some are like, ‘These are the clothes I left behind before I left for college in the 90s. ‘ It’s a wide variety from a bunch of lives lived that just all ended up in storage, and we use those objects as tools to tell a story about memory and grief,” Pierce said. “The idea is that a ghost, and a haunting, are really just memories. It’s about the things we have left behind, and it’s about what we are still trying to get at.”
“Hamlet” is a departure for the Dreamers Ensemble, which has previously presented comedic shows, including “The Importance of Being Earnest,” last summer’s rollicking take on “Alice in Wonderland,” and this past winter’s murder mystery spoof, “Murder for Dummies,” written by Dreamers actor Ben Michaud.
Pierce, who is co-directing “Hamlet” with Cheyenne Heinselman, said that when she and the company were thinking about their next show, they decided it was time for the Dreamers to branch out.
“We’re not interested in doing the same thing every summer. We want to do variety, to do different kids of shows, and different genres. We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves into just doing comedy,” she said. “We thought we should take a sharp left turn and do a drama or a tragedy.”
Pierce said she and Heinselman had been talking about doing “Hamlet” together since high school, when they did a “Hamlet in Space” skit at Children and the Arts.
“My co-director Cheyenne and I had a shared vision for it, and it’s a play we both love dearly. We just kept talking about it, and it got to the point where we said, let’s just do ‘Hamlet,'” Pierce said. “‘Hamlet’ also has a lot of strong comedic moments that really need to hit, or the show doesn’t work. It’s such a strong play, both comedically and dramatically.”
This is the first time the Dreamers will perform in the Park Theater in Jaffrey. Previously, they performed at the Mariposa Museum in Peterborough, which Pierce says “has been a magical space to perform in.”
“We really love the Mariposa, but were turning people away from our show over the winter. We had been talking to the Park Theater about bringing the Dreamers there, and then we brought it to Steve Jackson, the director; and we mentioned we were thinking of doing “Hamlet,’ their reaction just capped it; they were so excited. It just made sense,” Pierce said.
Pierce says performing Shakespeare always brings specific challenges.
“The biggest challenge wth ‘Hamlet,’ or any Shakespeare, is just making sure the play really lands with the audience. We’re having a test audience come in this week, which we always do, but it’s especially important with Shakespeare,” Pierce said. “It’s using visuals and language and acting to make sure the story makes sense to someone who doesn’t know the show or Shakespeare. It doesn’t follow a structure that people are used to; you have to make it so people understand it.”
“Hamlet” is the Dreamers’ largest production to date, with 16 cast members and 20 people in the company, including a tech team and a production team.
“The Dreamers is my own personal field of dreams. If you build it they will come, and the right people just find us,” Pierce said. “We have put so much love and thought into these shows, and we treat it like this precious work of art that we’re all making together. It’s very meaningful, and I feel like everyone gets something out of the experience of getting to make this thing together.”
The cast of the Dreamers’ Ensemble production of “Hamlet” includes Anna McGuiness as Horatio; Helen Martynuska as Hamlet, Daniel Sleeper as Claudius, Eve Pierce as Gertrude; Madison Aldrich as Rosencrantz; Eddie Gomez II as Guildenstern; Felix Hannah as Osric; May Cassidy as Ophelia; Benjamin Michaud as Polonius; Lif Petrova as Laertes/Player King; Sean Roberts as Marcellus/Player Queen/Priest/Ambassador; Spencer Mackensen as Bernardo/First Player/Fortinbras; Reo Sleeper as Ghost of Hamlet’s Father; Tegan Beinish as Player/Gravedigger; Shayna Hanley as Player/Gravedigger; and Faith Williams as Player.
Petra Mclay is technical director, and stage management is by Petra Mclay and Faith Williams, and co-directors are Eve Pierce and Cheyenne Heinselmen.
Tickets are available at https://theparktheatre.org/hamlet/.
