Select members of Ladysmith Secondary School (LSS)’s drama club have recently taken a keen interest in swordsmanship and are now learning the finer nuances of fencing from Georgia Newsome, a veteran coach and instructor.
Newsome will meet with the students a half-dozen times over the coming weeks to help them learn the basics of attacking and defending in preparation for the club’s next ambitious project, Hamlet.
Bill Taylor, the school’s drama teacher, said they’re learning how to fence now because the play will open in the midst of the climatic fight scene.
“I want to make the final fight scene really visceral,” Taylor added, “and then we’ll pause that fight scene and go back and reveal how each character got to this point, using hashtags and tweets to link the events together.”
“We have an angle that we’re going to use for this play,” Taylor said, before listing off a variety of innovations he and the students are implementing into their production of Hamlet.
“Hamlet is a Shakespearian tragedy that’s arguably the greatest play ever written in the English language,” he said. “It deals with revenge, but it also deals with themes of suicide, of familial love and of relationships.
“Central to the play is the notion that the main character is very reflective and thoughtful, and that leads him to inaction, which in turn spurs the tragic consequences of the play. The main character realizes that death will come no matter what and that worrying about it won’t help, a realization that frees you to live fully in the moment, every moment of your life.”
Taylor said that as Hamlet comes to this realization, the audience recognizes he’s ready to move forward, but it’s too late for him to escape the tragic consequences that await him.
“There’s no escaping the final outcome, which is his death, and the deaths of virtually everybody in the play.”
LSS’s approach to Hamlet is novel, or at least unconventional, in two ways.
“We’re casting Hamlet as a woman and reversing all the roles,” Taylor said, “because Shakespeare wrote for an all-male cast who performed the male and female roles. By reversing the roles, it offers a fresh look at what violence looks like coming from a woman to a man as opposed to the reverse, and it’s also a reversal of those familial relationships.”
By exploring those role reversals, Taylor said they’ll reveal a thing or two regarding gender roles in our society.
Alongside their creative approach to casting the play, Taylor said they plan to incorporate social media into the play.
“In the original play,” Taylor said, “the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears to reveal that his death was a murder and that Hamlet should avenge it. Hamlet wonders if it’s a real ghost, a true ghost, or if it’s been sent by the devil to tempt him. In our version, the ghost will be played by social media.”
The idea, Taylor added, ties into the fact that when you’re using social media, voices reach you, and you don’t always know how true they are.
Hamlet becomes ensnared by the trap — set by his murderous uncle King Claudius — in much the same way people find themselves trapped in the world of social media.
Taylor said they haven’t cast the play yet.
“Right now, we’re training the entire group,” he added, “and through this training, they’ll reveal which roles they should take in this play.”
They’ll debut Hamlet at LSS the first week of February, Taylor said, before venturing north to Nanaimo for the North Island Regional Drama Festival, or NIRD Fest, later that month.
In the run up to NIRD Fest, Taylor said donations of money or equipment, or assistance with fundraising would be greatly appreciated.
