Prinsessa HamletPrinsessan HamletPrincess Hamlet
“We remember those princesses who kill themselves, who leave
on time,
forcefully,
go down in flames.
The rest
they are nothing but women
who weren’t capable of living
no one remembers them, they are
erased by wind and sand from the pages of history until no trace remains.
This will not happen to me.”
Princess Hamlet wants to be remembered in history books, but a woman must go mad for that to be possible. Power, fame and gender – those are the ingredients of a great psychosis, a terror that shoves its hand in your throat and clenches into a fist. A difficult princess must be hidden away, to be prevented from ruining the facade.
From Shakespeare’s play, E.L. Karhu paints a ferocious study of rebellion, the romanticizing of madness and the stories we tell about men and women. It is a dazzling and vibrant, theatrically rewarding play that keeps resisting definitive interpretations.
The play has been translated into English, German and Czech. It has been produced at Schauspiel Leipzig.
