HAMLET PROJECT
What is Hamlet Project? We're so glad you asked!
Hamlet Project is a 5-year exploration of our favorite play. We invite you to join us as we pull-apart and put back together Hamlet. This year's Hamlet Project event was a haunted rock 'n' roll show. But that's just the beginning. Over the next 5 years we'll be experimenting with music, art, sound, dance, food, drink, cookies, traffic cones, spaceships, or whatever else we can get our hands on to turn Hamlet inside-out and-upside down! Each project will be an original and distinct theatrical event of unparalleled ambition and imagination. Welcome to Hamlet Project.
"The idea and overall project is a refreshing attempt to bring audiences back in touch with one of the greatest pieces of literature of all time." - Kendall Mostafavi, DC Metro Theater Arts
A ROCK 'N' ROLL MIXTAPE
Conceived by Kerry McGee, Nick DePinto and Chris Herring
June 2018
"Blissful” Chris Rustic and “Slick” Nick Riot of A RUSTIC RIOT are just playing a regular rock 'n’ roll gig, when their sweet tunes unexpectedly summon the ghosts from HAMLET - who hijack the show to tell their story one rock song at a time, spiraling us towards the dramatic denouement. Will Nick and Chris be able to finish their gig? Can indie rock prevent the greatest tragedy ever written? And who invited Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, anyway?
FEATURING
"Blissful" Chris Rustic
"Slick" Nick Riot
Aaron Cunningham
Meg Lowey
Moyenda Kulemeka
Paige O'Malley
Kerry McGee
Jon Reynolds
DIRECTED BY
Kerry McGee
PAST PERFORMANCES
June 9, 2018 at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, Washington DC
June 15, 2018 at The Shed in NE, Washington DC
June 16, 2018 at Loves Me Not in Adams Morgan, Washington, DC
Photos by Mark Williams Hoelscher and Sam Reilly
shakespeare karaoke
Conceived by Robert Pike & Kerry McGee
2019-20
This year's Hamlet Project event will invite the audience to interact with the text. We Happy Few will provide the text of Hamlet, scissors, and glue sticks. Your job: cut up the script. Reorder it. Rewrite it. Reassign it. Reimagine it completely. Are you tired of how wishy-washy Hamlet is? Change his motivations! Do you wish Ophelia had more to say? Give her some of your favorite lines! Have you ever wondered how your verse sounds next to Shakespeare’s? Now’s the time to find out! Take one of the best known texts in the Shakespeare cannon and make it your own.
You are then welcome to stand up and perform it, or hand it to one of our resident actors to perform on your behalf. Words, words, words!
PAST PERFORMANCES
November 23, 2019 4-7pm Lola's in Eastern Market
March 7, 2020 6-9pm Capitol Hill Arts Workshop
Photos by Robert Pike & Kerry McGee