A ‘Latin American and modern’ Hamlet arrives in Uruguay

Montevideo (EFE) .- Two years later than expected, due to the pandemic, it arrives in Uruguay Hamlet, William Shakespeare’s classic, this time with a “very Latin American and very modern” staging, according to its director, the Argentine Marcelo Díaz, who defines it as “a kind of theatrical Netflix”.

“It is a work of suspense, of politics… I think that is what the viewer is going to find: a kind of theatrical Netflix “, he says smiling during an interview with EFE before the premiere of the play, which will take place on January 8 at the El Galpón theater in Montevideo.

Above the tortuous relationship of the prince of Denmark with his mother, the constant presence of the ghost of his father or the love of Ophelia, prominent elements of the immortal work of the Bard of Avon, Díaz (Buenos Aires, 1955) is especially interested in the political aroma that exudes Hamlet.

“The main (issue) in Latin America is the relationship of power with the press media, and that is where I base myself. It is a bet, if you will, very Latin American, very modern too “, declares the also theater teacher, who insists that it would be” nonsense “to leave the play set” in its time “, since Shakespeare” modernized things. “

For the director, the work written around 1600 is closely related to Latin America, especially in the link “between economic, political, judicial and media power”, because, although it occurs in other parts of the world, like the Europe you have resided in for four decades, “It is not with the intensity or brutality”, he says, from his region of origin.

“There is nothing here but a coup, this was a coup. The new king killed the other king, took power, and the party that Hamlet leads, with his friendly people, is in opposition, in resistance. And this is very Latin American, it has to do with our history ”, he asserts.

Modern times

Rosencratz and Guildenstern, friends of Hamlet, whom they now spy for the new king, are not secondary behind the scenes and carry out their monitoring on stage using mobiles and computers, while the press publishes news about the prince’s violent acts without counting the reasons for his madness.

Fake news, media harassment … El Galpon’s is an updated version of an immortal work that the director considers can attract a young audience, accustomed to consuming other types of entertainment.

“I think we do a bad thing to the theater when we treat it like a museum piece. Shakespeare is wonderful because it makes us aware that, deep down, we are still the same, the world did not change as noticeably as we think, because otherwise these plays could not be as current ”, says Díaz.

Faced with the umpteenth statement about the extinction of theater at the hands of more modern genres – cinema, television, internet and today on-demand distribution platforms -, the director says that, in them, “there are very good things, but they do not have the depth of reflection on the human being and our relationships, on the one hand, nor the literary beauty and images of the theater, on the other “.

“That is why I believe that the theater is not going to die,” insists Díaz, who adds that the artists are “the buffoons of society”, those who hold “a mirror” so that it “can be seen in it.”

For this reason, consider that there are young people “with very great social concern, critical and with a need to tell stories” so that society “is better” and approaches the academies or schools to “become artists, especially theater people.”

Installed in Europe since 1982, with extensive experience in training and directing in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and settled in Spain since 2004, he confesses that waiting two years for the premiere on Saturday allowed the project to “mature”.

“One Hamlet it cannot be left as any other work. Hamlet It is the ambition of any director, of any actor … There is nothing else but Hamlet”, He comments and mentions the epitaph of the Russian director and theorist Vsévolod Meyerhold, who boasted of never having mounted that work.

“I thought it was going to be the same and, luckily, no … I was even afraid that they would say ‘here lies someone who put Hamlet, but he never premiered it, ‘which is even worse, “Diaz jokes with the assurance that his” Latin American and modern “version of Shakespeare’s classic will be seen in Uruguay.