The Perfect Hamlet.

In my last blog I wrote about how it does not really matter what interpretation of a character you experience as a viewer. What’s important is if the actor is able to transmit the characters emotions. As I listened to the radio recording I was surprised. I never imagined that prisoners would do that in jail but the idea fascinated me. When it was over I actually told my sister that she should listen to it.
My idea of the perfect play was Broadway and every time I thought of Hamlet I imagined New York City and Jude Law. But I was wrong, this was the perfect Hamlet. It didn’t matter that the actors weren’t famous. Instead they were criminals, people that had actually done the things the play talks about. And that makes it ideal, because they don’t have to fake the emotion, they have felt it so they know how to transmit it.

As the recording said, most of them barely had a high school education and all they knew about Hamlet was the famous quote “to be or not to be” but that was the main point because all of them were going through the same dilemma. Do they or live or don’t they? Do they change and regret what they did? Most of them want that and feel identified with the character. Four guys play Hamlet, they divide the lines and they actually said that Hamlet was like their fifth friend.

What Agnes is doing I think is really great, because the impression I got from the recording was that they prisoners learn and realize that what they did was wrong. They can have a real experience with the play because they can relate to it. Of course I can relate to it too. I can watch it, enjoy it, and say it impacted me and from the first time I saw it left a mark in my life for whatever reason. But that experience is different compared to the one the people of the Missouri East Correctional Institution have. They take the play as lesson, and through the character they represent realize the mistake they did. So it helps them. And if we were to see that play (I think) we would enjoy it too because it would be as if we were seeing a real life Hamlet. The character would have actually killed a man.