New New Hamlet

(that was totally not a doctor who-reference I promise.)

So, hello! Sorry about the not-blogging for a while, in case someone so happened to be following this blog and was terribly disappointed at the lack of posting.

Anyway; I am here today in order to tell you all that there are going to be some changes in this production. First of all, we are now only four people in the ensemble; because of this, we can't make this as we first intended to, but are now going to make a much shorter version, with much fewer characters. We are also moving it from the 19th century to modern time, we are and making it much more psychological.

Exactly how this is to be done is not very clear, as the 57864th editing of the script was initiated mere hours ago, but I can tell you that it is likely to be unlike any Hamlet that you might have seen before, and pretty damn awesome. Anyway, I'm very excited about this, and I hope it will turn out great. No, edit that; we will make it great.

Hopefully there will be more blogging henceforth, as we start to actually do this shit.~~

"I loved you once."

Greetings m'dears! Today me, Hedda (Hamlet), Maja (Ophelia) and Erika (usually Bernardo/Osric, but today our photographer) went to a castle and had a photoshoot, which resulted in this; also, a sneak peak at Hamlet's and Ophelia's costumes. Enjoy.~

(I strongly recommends listening to Of Monster and Men's Little Talks while watching this photoset because the lyrics fits very well imo.~)

(click the pictures for larger versions)

Loonies in a forest

Good e'en! Yesterday, after all the materials were bought, I, Hedda, started to work on the straitjacket that will be used in the play; and, about five hours later, it was finished. So today I and Maja set out to photograph this piece of art (in character, of course).

Our original plan was to take the pictures next to an old, abandoned asylum, but as we arrived on the site we discovered to our deep horror that it had been replaced with apartment blocks!!11!!!11! A plan B didn't exactly exist, but after a while of wandering around in far too high heels we found a nicely haunting forest to use as photography site instead.~

Anyway, it all resulted in this:

Two sour-cream packets and a few belts

lé key of awesomness 
(or the most amazing
key-ring ever)

 

 

Yesterday, me and Hedda bought two packets of sour-cream, and one packet of popcorn, and if you put the sour-cream packets next to each other, they were the exact same size as the popcorn packet. This could be the most amazing finds ever, so therefore I need to mention this, before moving to what we have done today.

Well, firstly, we - me (Maja) and Hedda - had a meeting and collected the key to the premises we will have our repetitions in - this means that we actually will start practicing for real now, which is awesome.

and the belts - aren't they pretty?

Then we went shopping, in search for belts and shirts to make a straitjacket of. This took a while, or, finding six belts that seemed suitable for making a 19th century straitjacket out of, took a while. After searching half - okay that might be a bit of an exaggeration - of the second hand stores in Stockholm, we finally made our way home, and that was our day.

Meeting and female Osric ~

Well hello there!

Erika is here once again to inform you, while you follow our journey, that we had a meeting today. If you could call music, people talking about non Hamlet related stuff and so on for a meeting, that is. But at last our dear Ophelia, with help from our wonderful Hamlet, could get some points through all the chaos.

Old (but not too old) photo of
Hamlet and Ophelia

I then opened up my computer to write some more “Irish-Osric” and can now say that I think I’m done with her lines. No, I didn’t write it wrong. Osric is now a girl because I suddenly looked up at Hedda and asked “Can we make Osric a female?” and she answered, without any hesitation, “Yes!”

So that’s what happened today. My Irish still sucks but I will be doing my own version of Irish and say I did my best. 

Hope you found this post entertaining. I will now leave you to your own life’s.

Until next time my dear friends!

Within the hollow crown, part I: Hamlet

"For within the hollow crown 

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps death his court"

Good e'en! Your faithful Hedda here to present a new series of posts: Within the hollow crown. This series, as you might have suspected, is to deal with the various crowns featured in the play (yes, there are quite a few). (I also really wanted a reason to use that Richard II-quote.)

So, first off is Hamlet's crown, because I happened to finish it today. It's mostly constructed by wire (general note: working with wire hurts), but detailed with silver pearls in shapes of skulls and chains. I haven't even tried to cover up the wire because I wanted to give it a sort of rough look, perchance matching the skulls, but also matching the way Hamlet as a character seems sort of closed off and repellent at times, but also occasionally being quite dangerous.

Now, the skulls are there because, well, it's Hamlet, and I just couldn't resist the temptation of putting skulls on his crown. They also contributed to the sort of rough look; as did the chains. They also looked sort of cool.

I was tempted to hang lots of chains all around the crown in various lengths, but 1) I wanted to keep the crown fairly simple and more chains sort of removed that, and 2) I didn't want a shitload of chains jingling all over my head while acting.

Thus, it ended up like this: (click it for a bigger picture)

yes I do realise that maybe stripes wasn't a brilliant choice of background
but it looked cool ok

And now I think I've ranted about this crown for long enough, so adieu for now.~

Who are North-North-West, Part IV: Erika/Bernardo and Osric

I'm Erika, 17 years old, and beside theatre, I love singing, writing, reading, drawing, play the piano and all sorts of stuff. The biggest part of who I am is, to me, to create things. My acting, singing, writing and drawings isn't something I just create, but something that describes who I am. Ugh that sounded cliché! Anyway, when I don't create things I eat sorbet and watch Detective Conan.



Me, playing a role based on
Ophelia in another play!

When I first was asked to join Hamlet, I said no! It all sounded fun and so, but English has never really been my thing. I love the language but can not for my life pronounce anything! I also had never ever read Hamlet and didn't know the story. But mostly, I was scared to do or say something wrong in front of some of my best friends. But why would you be scared of that, when they are all there to help you? Eventually, I gave in and said that I could be a part of it if I could get a really small role that didn't say much. That's how I became Bernardo!

How I then chose to be Osric (I don't understand a word of what he's saying) was because I fell in love with Laurence Olivier's version of him. And for some reason we thought it would be fun if Osric was Irish, so now I'm trying to write all his lines in some sort of pronunciation-help-in-Irish. Do you think I know Irish? No! Do you think that will stop me? Of course not!!! I will make Irish Osric a thing!

But now I have bored you enough with this text long! So long, and see you ~

Who are North-North-West, part III: Hedda/Hamlet

Good e'en! My name is Hedda and I am a 17 year old dork who likes to dress in stripes. I have a large interest for theatre (well duh) and Shakespeare; my favourite plays being the tragedies of Hamlet and Richard II. When I am not reading Shakespeare I often read other stuff (mostly fiction and poetry), write, photograph, watch films/TV-series/stage footage (though mostly Doctor Who), draw, craft, play ukulele etc.

Me, wearing particularly fancy clothes

In this production I play the part of the famously moody (and possibly schizophrenic) prince, Hamlet; the son of the previous king of Denmark, nephew to the current king Claudius, son of the queen Getrude, betrothed to Ophelia.

As he is one of my very favourite characters in literature I am very glad to have the opportunity to play him. It also involves a certain strain, but I suppose that's part of the fun. What makes me so interested in the character is partly his madness (how much of it is pretend; how much is not? etc.) and therein the opportunity to act as weird as one pleases, while still portraying a very intelligent and thoughtful character.

This is only one of the many aspects that makes the character so interesting, but if I were to deal with all of them in this text I would probably bore you to death, and I would rather wait with doing that until I am on the stage.

In playing such a well-known and studied character there is both lots of fun and lots of difficulties; for example, try to say "To be or not to be" without sounding like a cliché; at least I find it difficult, so I try to sort of remove myself from all that fame of the character and just do my own thing (well, I say "try"). I do, however, take inspiration from David Tennant's and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlets (and try to stay as far away from Laurence Olivier's Hamlet as possible).

I suppose you will see lots more of me here later on, and therefore will leave you for now. Adieu~

Who are North-North-West, part II: Maja/Ophelia

Hello there!

My name is Maja, I'm seventeen and probably the most boring person you'll ever meet. I'm here, so you could guess that I like theatre. Well, I do. I've played theatre for about eight years - add or take - and theatre have introduced me to some of the greatest people I know, and I mean, without it, I would never have ended up in this fantastic production. Marvellous, isn't it?

Me, when my hair was the colour of the blood of angry men.

Besides from theatre, I love to write, paint and read (my favourite books are Les Misérables and The Book Thief). I also have a weak spot for the sea, cats, videos of cats doing stupid things, plants, flowers and celery. If I could choose, I probably would live during the Edwardian era (or, I say this, then I hear some pretty song and realise I would not be able to hear all those wonderful songs if I lived during the early 20th century). I like Welcome To Night Vale, a lot. I also listen to music basically all the time but this is a blog about theatre and not the very long list of bands I happen to like (my favourites are The 1975, if you had to know).

In this production, I play Ophelia, who is a darling. I have wanted to play her for a while (since I read Hamlet for the first time, to be precise) (this was ages ago) and she is one of my favourite characters of all time, so I'm very excited about this. Ophelia is very different from previous parts I have played, it is a bit of a challenge because of this, but I also have tons of fun when playing her. When playing a character that has been done so many times, there are so many places to find inspiration in, which both makes it easier and so much more difficult to play her; so I just try to do what feels right, and hopefully, all will turn out well. (and even if I fail misearbly, I will get to wear a nice dress and throw flowers around me, what else do you need in your life?)

I also sort of-kind of-maybe play Marcellus, who is this Scottish guard dude who probably has a bagpipe hidden somewhere, and since I don't really play him I won't speak anymore about him.

And yeah, that is the end of this lovely story about me. 

Who are North-North-West, part I: The group

It was the 29th of March 2014 as two friends sat on a couch, and one of them said "Hey, didn't we speak about doing Hamlet?"; and thus, a theatre group was born. We begun as three mere members, and since then have expanded to our current eight members (though still growing).

We all met through our common interest for theatre and are all experienced in the field as we have practised the art together, some for many years, some for fewer years; and thus we now saw fit to take on the challenge of setting up the great tragedy of Hamlet.

As we are not connected to any theatrical companies, we stand for all parts of the production ourselves; that includes everything from acting and directing to costume, to managing, amongst other things.

We have decided to give the play sort of a different twist by moving it from its original Elizabethan to a more Victorian setting (though still with one or two streaks of Elizabethan). This will show most in the costume, which you will see more about later on.

Hitherto we have mostly read through the script, practised a few scenes and brainstormed ideas; the more serious practise will commence by the end of the summer. (Then there will also be weekly posts about our progress.)

Stay tuned for introductions of the ensemble and their characters, as well as lots of other stuff.~