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Deconstructing Hamlet

by Barbra Alan

Explore more of Hamlet.  Listen to the actors discuss their roles by clicking  icon below.

The Players

Casting Hamlet
With the 30-something Asselin in place as Hamlet, Cox considered her options in casting the roles of Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle-cum-stepfather, and Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. As she and Asselin talked about the Hamlet-Gertrude-Claudius dynamic, Cox says, “It made sense to cast actors who are more age-appropriate to the roles of Gertrude and Claudius than to cast 20-year-olds in those roles.”

Although Cox, who was already juggling myriad duties as Hamlet’s producer with her teaching load, hadn’t initially planned on being in the cast, she found the opportunity to work with a large group of students hard to resist. “I enjoy working with the students,” she says. “And the fact that I wasn’t playing a lead character gave me the opportunity to not only work with them, but to also observe their acting.”

... the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
- Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

For the role of Claudius, Cox says, “I wanted [to cast] someone who was experienced with Shakespeare and with whom I would really enjoy working.” Enter Richard Moses, a Rumney, NH-based actor whose résumé includes work with the Boston Shakespeare Company; Advice to the Players, a Sandwich, NH theatre group; and TIGER (Theatre Integrating Guidance Education and Responsibility), a collaboration between PSU’s Integrated Arts and Counselor Education graduate programs. Cox and Moses had worked together last summer in an Advice to the Players production of The Taming of the Shrew.

Although the rehearsal schedule for Hamlet paralleled that of TIGER, Moses was eager to play Claudius. “I’ve done Hamlet twice before and played Polonius both times,” he says. “This [production] was my chance to take a stab—no pun intended—at Claudius.”

On April 28, 2008, auditions were held for the remaining roles in Hamlet.

Andrew Codispoti, who graduated from PSU in 2008 with a theatre arts degree and who enrolled in Asselin’s stage combat class as a continuing education student, auditioned for the role of Laertes. He notes that the physical demands of the role appealed to him as much as the emotional demands. “The chance to learn how to sword fight was really appealing to me, and it’s such a meaty and complex role,” he says.

No stranger to Shakespeare, Codispoti has appeared in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, and As You Like It. But he’s quick to point out he wasn’t always at ease with the Bard. “I had the fear of Shakespeare that a lot of people have—it’s this weird kind of language that’s difficult to understand,” he says.

That all changed two years ago when he took Acting III—a course in which Asselin and Cox shared teaching duties. “During that class, I fell in love with the language,” Codispoti says. “It just opened up for me. Once you work with it, it becomes natural.”

Angela Smith, a senior theatre major whose Shakespeare experience includes playing Macbeth in last Winterim’s PSU Reader’s Theatre production, auditioned with her heart set on playing Ophelia. “I was attracted to the role because it’s challenging—she’s complicated and difficult,” she says.

Like Codispoti, Smith concedes that overcoming the Shakespearean language barrier can be a challenge. “As an actor, you need to make the language realistic and natural,” she says. “It’s so poetic that it’s easy to forget that somewhere underneath that verse is a human being speaking and discovering these thoughts for the first time.”

Top photo: Paul Hartwell '09 plays Hamlet's loyal friend and confidant Horatio.  Photo courtesy of Jon Gilbert Fox. Second photo: Kevin Asselin '97, Richard Moses, and director Chuck Vicinus during rehearsal.  Photo courtesy of John Gilbert Fox. Bottom photo: Horatio grieves for Hamlet.  Photo courtesy of Newfound Photography.

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