Hamlet

The clock strikes eight. Ghosts appear—Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Ophelia, so strikingly similar they could be mistaken for one another. Horatio doesn’t know whether to trust his eyes or his mind. The ghosts of his dead friends seek contact. Why have they returned? Gently, they persuade Horatio to remember and to face his mission. For Hamlet, on his deathbed, charged him to carry on living and to tell his story to those who doubt. But how can he tell this story when the world has been thrown into chaos? The ghosts reply: together. The four begin to tell their story: about themselves, about Hamlet, and how, in his search for the will to act, he lost touch with himself and with others. Together, Horatio and his friends grapple with and act out their attempts to make sense of the events: Did they betray Hamlet? Themselves? Could they have acted differently? Past scenes and Hamlet come to life in their performance—in constant interaction with one another and with us, the audience. Julia Riedler, named Actress of the Year by *Theater heute* and a Nestroy Prize winner, counters the tragedy with vulnerability and connection in her directorial debut and asks: How can one act in the face of a situation where one feels powerless?