We’ve got a castle, let’s put on a show!
THE
upcoming production of Hamlet by the Upstart Crows of Santa Fe and the Shakespeare Gym promises to be one of the most unusual Shakespeare stagings in recent local history. The actors playing Hamlet, Horatio, Laertes, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern are all in their teens, as their characters would have been at the time the play was written, and the setting is the ruins of Seton Castle in Seton Village. The teens are all regular participants in the Upstart Crows, a youth theater group founded by Caryl Farkas in 2014. Performing uncut versions of Shakespeare and other classic plays is the centerpiece of the group’s mission, although Hamlet, Shakespeare’s longest play at more than 30,000 words and one of the most difficult to interpret successfully, will be trimmed to a 2 1/2-hour running time.
Their senior counterparts who play the other characters — including Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, and the ghost of Hamlet’s father — come from the Shakespeare Gym. It’s another Farkas project, this one serving a broad range of ages, and like the Upstart Crows, it takes a text-based orientation, using “deep explorations of Shakespeare’s language and meaning” with characterizations based on “fitting the action to the word.” (If this sounds like the International Shakespeare Center’s artistic ethos, it’s no coincidence; Farkas is one of its founders as well.)
Her exposure to Shakespeare began at an unusually young age. When she was 4 or 5, Farkas’ father started performing Shakespearean monologues for her as bedtime stories. “I didn’t understand much of what they were about at first,” she says, “but I was captivated by the sound of the language.” Theater came in and out of her life at different points, including a highly memorable Death of a Salesman with George C. Scott she saw while in high school, until she came across the Young Shakespeare Players while living in Madison, Wisconsin.
“They worked with kids as young as 6,” Farkas says, “and I realized that they were having the same experience I did as a child.” She started working with the company as a volunteer and when Farkas’ husband retired, they moved back to New Mexico. They had lived in Taos from 1986 to 1997,
always hoping to return, and she launched the Upstart Crows soon after arriving in Santa Fe.
“Staging a Hamlet with the actors the same ages as the characters has always been a dream of mine,” she says. While she’s listed in the program as stage director, she emphasizes that it’s been a highly collaborative process, with staging and interpretive ideas coming from all the cast members. “Many of the kids have acted in more Shakespeare plays than the adults, so there was an immediate mutual respect across the age difference as a result.”
Staging it at Seton Castle was also her idea; a friend recommended she take a look, and she was immediately drawn to the idea after seeing it. An outdoor venue brings a host of challenges, especially during a New Mexico spring, but also presents unique opportunities. “One of our gravediggers suggested he enter on a riding mower,” she says, “and we’ve just found one that should fit the bill.”
Pasatiempo asked six young cast members what they were most excited about and most scared about in the production, and to tell us how they were learning to relate to characters whose life experiences were so different from their own. Here are excerpts from their replies. (The role of Hamlet is double cast, so there are two responses for his character.)
details
▼ Hamlet
▼ 7 p.m. Friday-Sunday, May 27-29 and June 3-5
▼ Seton Castle, Seton Village; Google for directions
▼ Tickets are $20; upstartcrowsofsantafe.org