i made this post with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. i am, alas, both guarded and blasĂŠ about my profession. but every few weeks, i scroll through this thread to read all of the new stories. theyâre mesmerizing to me.
the thing is, i am not the sort of person who gets to play hamlet. iâm a trans guy from rural texas who grew up in a trailer in the woods. i have the body of a ballerina, the personality of a court jester, and the backstory of a wattpad bad-boy. to this day, i feel strange about my relationship toâletâs be realâan art form with a steep and costly barrier to entry, one which i frankly had no business attempting to climb
so, in the spirit of vulnerability, i am going to take my tongue out my cheek and tell you all about my actual experiences playing hamlet
the pre-show featured the last minute addition of a stuffed penguin. the director wanted me in pajamas for the opening âclaudius is king and hamlet is clearly pissed about itâ sequence, but decided that the costumerâs efforts didnât make me pitiful enough, so he handed me a stuffed animal. in the original pre-show, i was moping around the stage, rolling on the floor and watching the audience file in. i decided that the best use of the penguin would beânaturallyâto have it mope with me. every time i adjusted myself on the floor, i adjusted the penguin alongside me. sometimes, i stopped to stare at it intensely. the audience fucking loved this so muchâevery nightâwhich i was not expecting, but obviously leaned into. it did an effective job of depicting hamlet as unsettlingly calculated, but vulnerable
someone brought a little girl (6, maybe 7) to see one of the first few performances. she sat in the front row. during act one, i made a show of looking around at the (overwhelmingly adult) audience before leaning down to ask herââam i a coward?â she, of course, laughed at me. the next line was an affirmative ââswounds, I should take it,â which felt like a fitting response to being laughed at by a little girl
another little kid storyâsomeone brought their 11 year old, who seemed a bit bored at first. by the end of act 1, he was on the edge of his seat, and during intermission, he moved down to the front row. i cannot help but humor children, so i (of course) looked directly into his eyes to say the âvery witching time of nightâ speech as though i were telling him a ghost story. he lit up like crazy. (his guardians were obviously a bit confused by his enthusiasm, but pleased! so thatâs good)
that kid wasnât the only one who caught wise to my audience shenanigans. we sold out before opening night, but there were usually a handful of open seatsâa lot of the reservations were for groups/clubs/whatever that didnât end up filling every spot. people would avoid the first row for act 1, but invariably, act 2 would see it filled with eager participants, lol
on opening night, i was playing through the sequence whereâspoilersâhamlet and horatio confirm that claudius killed king hamlet through the power of shenanigans and, in an exercise of pre-meditated audience interaction, went up to a girl in the front row (who seemed really into it) and asked for a high five. she paused in shock, so i begged âcome on!â in my most encouraging voice and, of course, she did. the entire audience lost it
the audience (for obvious reasons) perks up in recognition for âto be or not to be.â i decided to lean into it, which was very fun for me. i would always start the speech and immediately flick my eyes across the audience to catch people gasping and (in some cases, hilariously) mouthing along with the words. as soon as i made eye contact, theyâd snap back into the scene with me apologetically. one night, someone gasped loud enough that their friend shushed them
i could keep going, but those were the fun ones. hereâs a picture of me with my penguin:
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