About

Hamlet: Prince of Denmark is an original adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet co-created by Cary Sasso and Ryan Dukes which reimagines the titular prince as a ftm transgender teenager. Picking up on strong affinity queer teens have for Hamlet - he's something of an icon for trans youth - this adaptation asks the question: what if Hamlet was not a prince at all, but a transgender teenager using Shakespeare's text to cope with his grief and isolation, framing the people in his life as queens, kings, and lords and himself as the heroic prince of Denmark as part of a desperate quest for meaning and dignity? As the story progresses and Hamlet begins to lose his grip on reality, the line between Hamlet's imposed Shakespearean narrative and the underlying reality begins to blur, leaving Hamlet alone with his hoodie, his taped-together paper crown which the other characters constantly try to destroy, and his faltering princely persona to navigate a hostile world of genuine kings, queens, and lords hell-bent on ripping away his sense of identity.

This adaptation blurs the original Shakespearean text with choreographic movement sequences. In terms of the Shakespearean text itself, the changes we made largely involved changing the pronouns of the text so that all of the characters - excluding the ever-loyal Horatio - misgender Hamlet constantly, making every line an individual act of violence, playing with the ways that language has the power to harm or heal. Examples include Claudius calling Hamlet "daughter" to belittle him, Horatio consistently referring to Hamlet as "my lord" to affirm him, and Ophelia beginning to misgender Hamlet when she is forced to return his love letters. The subtle tweaking of the original text draws on the parallels between Hamlet and the transgender experience already latent in the text instead of imposing a narrative on top of it, particularly pulling on Hamlet's eloquent voicing of the feeling of being at odds with society and the text's focus on self-harm and suicidal ideation (The Trevor Project's website states that nearly half of all transgender youth have considered attempting suicide in the past month). The choreographic movement sequences give the audience a glimpse of Hamlet's reality under his theatrical facade, exposing the real tragedy of the play: the insecure, abandoned child obscured by the heroic persona Hamlet walls around himself.

This production was self-produced as a Nitery Experimental Theater (NExT) Mainstage with the support of the Asian American Theater Project (AATP) Grant.