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Director's Notes for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Contributed by: Merriemaid
Dec 5 2003 7:00:00
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Having just directed the play after a decade-long desire to do so and coming to realize that not everyone had a decade-long love affair with the play (and hence not quite as deep an understanding of the text), the following are the director's notes I had my Hamlet (who is an English teacher) write for the show. [A note on the director's notes: I set the play in limbo, had R&G the only people who didn't know they were dead, and the show worked very, very well, but some of the notes refer to the way the show was done.]
Director’s Notes
Ever feel that everyone knows a secret except you? That you are just a pawn in someone else’s game? That events are moving so quickly, you hardly have the time to remember your own name? Then playwright Tom Stoppard would like to have a word with you. An Oscar and Tony-winning writer, Stoppard burst onto the theatrical scene in 1967 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a dramatic inversion of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. As if reading the Bard’s most famous play through the wrong end of a telescope, Stoppard puts Hamlet’s two most minor characters front and center, dropping them into a maelstrom of political machinations and murder. Will Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discover whom they can trust?; what they are supposed to do?; why everyone speaks in verse?; and where that music is coming from? A heady brew of cock-eyed slapstick and existential angst, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead reminds us of one of life’s few truisms: being the star of your life also means being the third person from the left in everybody else’s.
A Quick and Easy Guide to Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, has returned from school on the occasion of his father’s death to discover that his uncle, Claudius, has not only ascended the throne but also married the just-widowed Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. The situation gets even worse when Hamlet is informed by the ghost of his dead father that Claudius poisoned the former king in order to steal both crown and queen. Swearing revenge, Hamlet decides to trap Claudius by feigning madness, even going so far as to reenact Claudius’s crime with the help of some traveling actors. Stunned by the fact that Hamlet knows of his deed, Claudius decides to send Hamlet to England in the company of two childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who bear a letter asking the king of England to execute Hamlet. While on board ship, Hamlet rewrites the letter and then takes advantage of a pirate attack to return to Denmark for the play’s blood-soaked finale.
Hamlet Characters:
King Hamlet murdered by Claudius
Prince Hamlet avenging son
King Claudius usurper of the throne
Queen Gertrude wife of both kings
Polonius Claudius’s trusted advisor; killed by Hamlet
Laertes son of Polonius and would-be-avenger
Ophelia Polonius’s daughter and Hamlet’s former girlfriend
Horatio Hamlet’s best friend
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Hamlet’s childhood friends;
now spies for Claudius
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