By Natalie DiNenno ’18
At Williams, students and faculty work closely together in a collaborative environment where ideas are shared and learning never stops. The theatre department’s fall production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is just one example of this remarkable collaboration, whether it takes place on stage, off stage, in the classroom, or around campus.
The text of Hamlet is complex, but director David Eppel’s vision takes this classic English class reading and brings it into the present, making it more accessible to both the audience and the student actors. Apurva Tandon, who plays Guildenstern, is very familiar with the story of Hamlet. She is currently taking an English course of the same name and exploring the multiple interpretations the story presents. “There’s a great synergy between the class and the production. The departments have a great relationship,” she says. The class has helped her to envision her role on stage, and ask herself what she believes the meaning of the text to be. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop learning from Hamlet.
The students in the theatre department work in an apprenticeship model, with faculty members involving them in every step of the production—from researching materials to calling the show. “We strive to give them the experience they would have in professional theatre,” says dramaturg Amy Holzapfel. “We don’t make it easy for them.” But the students are always up for a challenge. Stage manager Jenny Dewar says that she has never seen a read-through of a script so thorough, even after 14 years on Broadway.
From the beginning, students have been breaking down lines and working to grasp the meaning of the play. For the department’s condensed version, choices had to be made about which lines stayed and which went. Eppel and Holzapfel made the original cuts, but Holzapfel says that students fought for and against lines. And while loose blocking was previously made, Dewar remarks that the director is receptive to students’ ideas, allowing for “organic blocking, not a paint by numbers.” The play that results brings together the most important parts of the original text, agreed upon by all, as well as movements that feel natural and appropriate.
By working together, the theatre department’s faculty and students present a production that is unique and meaningful to everyone, because they all played a part in its creation.
Photos by David Dashiell