Directing Towards Freuds Hamlet in Y2K essays

Directing Towards Freuds Hamlet in Y2K essays Before we begin, I would like to congratulate you all on getting selected for the various parts in this production of Hamlet. My name is Glenn Close, and I will be directing this production from today until it closes in Tokyo next May. I have played the role of Gertrude, as many of you know, in the Hollywood production starring Mel Gibson. I also played Ophelia twice in high school and once my senior year at UCLA. This is my favorite Shakespeare play, one of the best of all time. Recently I was reintroduced to Freuds notable commentary on Shakespeare and his relation to Sophocles in The Interpretation of Dreams. From this I have pulled the essential pages and copied them for your perusal. In fact, each of you received those pages one week ago and were asked to come prepared to discuss its important aspects and to help me create a clearer vision of what we can do to make our Hamlet more like the one that Freud envisioned in 1899. As the director of this play, I have gathered you all here today to explain what this particular version of Hamlet is best representing. I decided to try to help Hamlet become more overtly repressed by his intellect so that Freuds vision can come to light in the minds of our audiences. In my humble opinion, no single director has yet made a good project out of exploring fully the impact of repression on the individual through the impotence of a paralyzed Hamlet. There is a reason for this. Many directors have tried and failed for the following reason: they were all men. Only a woman with the understanding of what it means to be sexually craved by her son can do justice to the directorship in the light of what Freud understood. I want this version of Hamlet to represent a modern day sexual scenario. By changing a few scenes, I can show Hamlets repressed emotions toward Gertrude, and his resentment toward Claudius. I want Hamlet almost to give in to his feelings for his mother . ..