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‘To be or not to be’ uttered in Lithuanian
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"TO be or not to be, that is the question.” The famous phrase by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, asked in the opening of the Nunnery Scene has turned the play into a classic. Written sometime between 1599 and 1602, “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” by William Shakespeare will soon be brought to stage in Shanghai thanks to troupe from Lithuania.
Coming amid the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death in 2016, OKT-Vilnius City Theatre will stage their “Hamlet” in March at Shanghai Drama Artistic Center.
“We’re in acute need of self-analysis, in order to understand our environment and the decisions we make about living,” said Lithuanian theater director Oskaras Korsunovas, who won the Lithuanian National Prize and the European New Reality Prize in 2002.
For a director, staging “Hamlet” is a bit like getting married, Korsunovas said.
“It is something you feel you’ll have to do, when the time is right. And sooner or later the time will be right. My own inner life at this point is, I feel, consistent with Hamlet’s life as a dramatic character,” he said.
After graduating from Music Academy of Lithuania with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theatre directing, he staged more than 20 performances, first at Academic Drama Theatre of Lithuania, later at OKT, and now focuses on present-day reality, chaos and paradox, absurdity and fragmentation.
“We may even need to nurture a certain ‘paranoia’ in ourselves, in order to protect ourselves from making fundamental errors in understanding the world. We need to overcome the calm that surrounds us, we need to learn and relearn that it’s an illusion,” he said, talking about “Hamlet.”
Hamlet, he said, is as relevant today as it was hundreds of years ago. “All answers to what is happening to us now are to be found in our recent past. Our whole understanding of reality is completely conditioned by the events and the thinking of the 20th century. It is almost as if the 21st century refuses to begin.”
The three-hour play will be performed in two acts in Lithuanian language with Chinese subtitles.
Date: March 10-12, 7:30pm; March 12-13, 2pm
Venue: Shanghai Drama Arts Center (288 Anfu Rd)
Tickets: 50-380 yuan
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