to tell my story: a hamlet fanfic
- Lighting Designer
The Welders
Performed at
Silver Spring Black Box
July 18 - 30, 2017
Playwright:
Alexandra Petri
Director:
Megan Behm
Production Manager:
Rich Ching
Stage Manager:
Mary Cat Gill
Asst. Stage Manager:
Allie Heiman
Props Designer/Scenic Coordinator:
Lauren Chilton
Sound & Projections Designer:
Veronica J. Lancaster
Lighting Designer:
E-hui Woo
Costume Designer:
Danielle Preston
Technical Director/Master Electrician:
Dean Leong
Photo credit:
Teresa Castracane Photography
There’s something fresh and exciting in Alexandra Petri’s destruction/deconstruction of the received Hamlet – this too-precious monolithic artifact from the 16th century that has taught straight white boys the finer points of gaslighting for personal gain. Her to tell my story: a hamlet fanfic is a riotously perfect send-up of Shakespeare’s play, as well as a poignant exploration of that peculiar and universal loneliness of adolescence.
- Mike Bevel
Petri has channeled her gift for social satire into a frenetic, funny, and relatable vision of Hamlet for the internet age. The confusing landscape of high school, wracked with disorienting forces of social media, bullying, and teenage angst, forms a compelling psychic battleground for the Bard’s doomed Dane.
This game of theatrical “telephone” between actors and audience invokes the truth-distorting power of the internet while channeling Hamlet’s disillusionment and paranoia as he stalks the halls of Elsinore Castle. The whole experience is simultaneously funny, alarming, and mind-bending.
- Ben Demers
The Elsinore-prowling man in black becomes Elsie, an Internet-roaming teenage girl in black, in “To Tell My Story: A Hamlet Fanfic ,” an ingenious, if sometimes strenuously jokey, new play by Alexandra Petri. Produced by the Welders, the D.C. playwrights’ collective, “To Tell My Story” teems with clever correlatives to Shakespeare’s tragedy. To start with, Hamlet’s near-mythic angst has an equivalent in the rebelliousness and restless creativity of Elsie, whose weekday survival strategies include scarfing lunch over a commode.
- Celia Wren