Date/Time/Location

Friday, May 20
Friday, May 27
Saturday, May 28
7pm in Girvetz Theater, UCSB

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Who isn't familiar with Hamlet, Shakespeare's classic tragedy? Murder, incest, revenge... robots. Perhaps there is more contained in this "familiar" tale than we commonly believe. With this aim in mind, UCSB's FUN Club is proud to present Hamlet on the Moon. This futuristic adaptation aspires to communicate the themes Shakespeare originally intended; themes that contemporary productions often fail to convey.

To bring these themes to a modern audience, the setting of the play has been changed from the end of the Middle Ages to a comparable stage of lunar development. The class differences between the characters, for example, would have been clear to the audience in Shakespeare's time. In contemporary productions, however, these differences in status go all but unnoticed. In Hamlet on the Moon, the caste system of the time is emphasized with the introduction of robot advisors, two-headed courtiers, and cyborg guards. Similarly, Hamlet himself is a clone of his two fathers, struggling between the bloody and revenge-driven world of the deceased Old Hamlet and the diplomatic new court of Gertrude (or, in our version, Prime Consort Garrison).

The script was written by two UCSB students, Daniel Moore (20, Computer Science Major) and Graham Talley (20, Psychology Major). The performances will take place on May 20, 27, and 28 at Girvetz Theater on the UCSB campus.