Hamlet 2021's Outrageous Fortune

ABSTRACT

Load shedding (power cuts) in our corner of Pretoria coincided with the performance, so the laptop had to run on its own steam while internet access was channelled through a smartphone hotspot (the signal of which had proved unstable in the past but on this occasion held up bravely). Plans for Hamlet at The Fugard were then already under way;the play text became a frequent point of reference during the workshop sessions, and the three-day event closed with a roundtable discussion on the Fugards proposed production. In the blurb beneath the video link, Coppen paid homage to the support that the project received from Fugard Artistic Director Greg Karvellas and his team, as well as to the theatre's founder and benefactor, Eric Abraham. The online experience is defined by the physical separation of audience members and actors the performance takes place in a makeshift, inbetween virtual world of its own.