Hamlet's Dumb Show. Lesson Two

A dumb show; a play within a play, a small devised show between a group of actors in a performance, a pantomime.

After listening to the dumb show text from Hamlet we were all put into groups of three and then asked to devise three dumb shows, they began at two minutes, then one minute, finally ending on a thirty second exploration of the piece.

Group One: Gemma, Kate and Abigail
Group Two: Kendra, Lee and Emma
Group Three: Sarah Jane, Paul and Chantelle

To devise the shows we had to use all the skills that we had already acquired in all of the theatre skills classes previous to this class, but also to include the newly learnt ‘States of intensity.’ The ‘States of intensity’ scale was used to develop characters, for example in my portrayal of the anonymous poisoner I entered the scene in a Californian state as I was laid back, chilled out and my body did not feel tense, but as the scene developed my state changed to Bomb in the room state as I became quite edgy and I was paranoid as I had just killed the king.

“ A group of travelling actors go to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncles guilt. He will have the players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which Hamlet imagines his uncle to have murdered his father…” (www.sparknotes.com)

All performances, regardless of time, had to include all the characters; the king, the queen and the anonymous person (the poisoner), and had to follow a set sequence of the elements that made up the dumb show. In each new performance we had to change the role that we played before, so that we all got a chance to interpret all of the characters. All groups and all the members of the class had varying interpretations of the characters, which was shown in their awareness of posture, body movement and a generally physical awareness of the space. It was also important to show a 'real' scene, to give real gifts, and to show real actions, for example taking the poison out of a pocket, rather than from the air!

Personally I thought the thirty second explorations worked the best because there was a clear emphasis on not rushing the actions, and all the unnecessary movements were erased (long introductions, exits, overtly dramatic gestures). All the shorter performances were precise. The presents given to the queen were clearly extravagant gifts including gold rings, diamonds and animals. All the ending performances had a constant flow to them.