Letter to Kathleen Irace

Dear Kathleen,

A while back we found out about Tim Sheridan's production of the Q1 Hamlet at Theatre of Note and contacted him. He in turn told us that you were production dramaturg and gave us your email address. We are producing the Q1H in NYC and would very much like to engage both of you in a dialogue about the play and your experience with it, if you're game.

We have created a blog that will give you an overview of our circumstances. In brief, we produced the play in June of 06 and had such a rewarding experience with it that we looked for an opportunity to remount it. Then recently, we were accepted in the Brick Theater's summer festival and now have the rare chance for a 'redo' with the same cast, director and ad/sm.

The Brick is wonderful place to work. The Village Voice once called them unpretentious, which -- insisting this could not stand -- is how its members decided to call this year's festival the "Pretentious Festival." In rereading the introduction to the book you edited, The First Quarto of Hamlet, I actually found this rather fortuitous: You called the Medieval Players and Oregon Shakespeare Festival's productions, respectively, "intentionally unpretentious" and "even more unpretentious." In fact, one of the most personally satisfying aspects of our production is its simplicity. Using very few props and set elements, all we really need is a stage, the actors, the audience and the text, which we too present wholly unapologetically. Like the Medieval Players' production, we have seven actors playing multiple roles, letting the characters, fast action and story line speak for themselves.

I will post this letter to you on the blog and hereby invite you to participate in our dialogue, publicly or privately, if you prefer. Either way, we would be honored by and look forward to your unique perspective on the work.

Best wishes,
Gabriele