This is a standard feeling after the show closes. When the experience has slipped through your fingers and nothing tangible has changed, it can feel like the Herculean effort to make it happen was all for naught. It’s not like when you build a building and when you’re done, you have a building and you can go in to that building and recognize what you did. When you build a show, you build a dream and while you are dreaming it, it is the most vivid, the most visceral, the most alive but then you wake up and the details start to slip away. It can feel like it was all for nothing.

Who better to wonder about the power of acting than an actor? And yet such is the power of this particular writer that we almost never feel that. We think of Hamlet as a person, going through his experience and the Players as the actors. It almost makes the outside story more real because there are actors acting inside it.

These lines are also a great clue to the actor playing The First Player

My friend Christopher organized something he called the Hamlet Rave. It was more party than performance but the entire play was read or performed from beginning to end in the midst of music, twitter updates, video and commentary. The only time the chaos paused was for the soliloquys and Christopher asked some of his best actor friends to perform them. We got to choose which one we wanted to do.

I asked for this one and was thrilled to get to do it. It was a privilege to ride the roller coaster of the words, to speak this juicy language, to give a speech that marvels at the power of theatre in a theatrical context. It runs the emotional gamut and to really explore the range of that, to use all that Rasaboxes training and switch quickly from one state to the next. Oh it was thrilling.
I’d love to get a chance to tackle it again.

This speech is often referred to by this line. People will say, “Oh, are you doing rogue and peasant slave?”
That’s why I’m thinking about the performance of it now, with this line, as opposed to the line about Hecuba which is actually how I think of it. My shortcut for it is the Hecuba speech – the “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to her. . .” But then I am slightly obsessed with Hecuba in this play.

All that aside – this first line gave me trouble for a while. I didn’t understand why the slave Hamlet feels himself to be is a rogue and peasant one. Then it occurred to me that rogue might not be describing the slave but be an identity in addition to it. That is, it could be two thoughts “a rogue” and “a peasant slave’ Two things. Like being an asshole and a jerk.

I was just sitting here thinking about what my friend said to me on the phone this morning, “And are you doing all of this all on your own?!?” And pretty much, I am. I don’t particularly WANT to be doing it all alone but when colleagues and collaborators and partners in crime keep dropping away like this, it’s hard to proceed any other way.

And while it is hard to proceed all on my own, I will say that there are benefits. I answer to no one but myself and this gives me ample opportunities to just follow my own impulses, to ride the wind, as it were. I’d change that in a second, though for a creative partner I could really jam with.

First: language question: Did goodbye come from God Bye? And what does bye mean? Or Did it mean.
Now it’s clear that bye is just a leave taking. I wonder if it once meant something else.

Second: This line makes me think of how impossibly awkward it can be to part company with someone, how hard it is to say, “Leave me alone” how hard is it to say, “This conversation needs to be over now.” There are times when it must be nice to be a king – to say simply, “You’re dismissed.” And you are free. I’m not sure how gracefully Hamlet’s managing it here.

Just not in my chambers.

Not where I am.

Not in those private spaces we might have used to pass the time.

Not in the parlor.

Not in the bar.

Not in the pool room.

Not in the chapel.

But you’re welcome. Roam around.

Just not where I roam.

If you’re not looking at them, one could forget that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in this scene. They clam up when Polonius and the Players show up and only speak again to say goodbye.
There’s something a little sad about them waiting around on the edges, waiting for Hamlet’s attention once again, only to find themselves summarily dismissed. I almost want to re-punctuate this sentence to have Hamlet fake them out entirely – to approach them warmly with “My good friends-“ arms open, smile friendly, expansive physicality – and then, quick turn – “I’ll leave you till tonight.” Friendly fake out.

Follow that lord, and look you mock him not.
In one of my first clown classes, we did an exercise in which all the clowns were students in a classroom. Our teacher (the extraordinary Jane Nichols) played The Teacher. Our chairs were arranged in typical classroom lines. When we began, The Teacher was very stern with us. Then she told us she was leaving the room. She gave us three very important rules. One of them was “No swearing” – the other two MAY have been “No touching” and maybe “No throwing paper.”
Whatever they were, the instant we were left alone, all three rules were instantly broken. And broken with great relish and pleasure.
Now, in this instance it was very clear that we were meant to break the rules. We were clowns in a clown class – a basic part of an instruction is learning how to disrupt, to be disobedient, to break all rules but the rules of pleasure and confusion.
Hamlet might just be pulling a Clown teacher move here. Whatever you do, don’t swear. Don’t make fun of this guy.

When people hear that I spent a chunk of my childhood without plumbing, they’ll often say “But you had a well, right?”
Well, no.
There was a pump but the water wasn’t potable. We washed dishes with it and ourselves but for drinking water, we went to the creek.
I dreamed of a well out back and we’d turn a crank and send a bucket down, then bring it back up filled with water. Then it would just be a few quick steps back to the house.
The creek required crossing the front yard, going down the steps to the road, circling down the road into the little opening in the trees and up a little ways to a place you could get some depth. To a small person, it felt like an epic journey – especially once the bucket was full.

I would love to have this kind of repertoire at my fingertips – to be able, if someone asked, to suddenly do a show on demand. I’m not sure I’d even be able to do a show on demand that I did a month ago. To keep plays in one’s head, as if they were an album of songs that one could play on request? That would be extraordinary of course, also. Even when I was in a band and had an album’s worth of songs, I’m not sure I could have always played one on request without some form of rehearsal.
It took a few months to get an old show back up to speed recently. But it would be a dream to have a jukebox full of plays that you could just put a quarter in and get. Dreams of Jukebox Theatre.