DENMARK: Variations 24, 27, 32
(Abandoned; Doppelganger; Madness, II)

Version of Hamlet performed in a large and long-abandoned warehouse. Hamlet wanders alone,
attempting to find the actor who plays Horatio so that he may speak his first lines. It is possible
the other characters are in the warehouse as well, searching, like Hamlet, for the actors with
whom they may begin their scene. It is equally possible that no one else is in the warehouse.
Hamlet’s footsteps resound throughout the empty rooms.

Version of Hamlet in which Laertes and Hamlet are each the double of the other, played by
nearly identical actors, wearing nearly identical costumes. The actors themselves seem unsure
who is supposed to be whom: they mix up each other’s lines, each reaches for the other’s sword,
a kiss on Ophelia’s check is equally charged with distain and incest. Dying, each stabbed by the
other, it is impossible to say whether Hamlet has murdered Laertes or Laertes Hamlet.
Alternatively, version in which Ophelia and Hamlet are nearly indistinguishable. We
begin to suspect after a time that it is Hamlet, too sensitive to carry out the ghost’s commands,
who lies drowned by suicide in act three, while Ophelia in her mourning clothes continues the
work of revenge.

Version of Hamlet as monologue, in which Hamlet speaks the lines of each of the other
characters, as if he already knows what they are going to say and is mocking them for it. After
several minutes it becomes clear that the others onstage are not characters, but onlookers,
concerned.