A New Perspective on HAMLET Comes to Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater

An interactive retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet comes to Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater in Gravedigger's Tale, October 19-28. Performances are 7:30 pm Friday & Saturday, and 2 pm Sunday.

Using Shakespeare's moving words and help from the audience, this forty minute performance combines the text from Hamlet with original and traditional music to tell the classic story from the perspective of the Gravedigger.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the Gravedigger appears briefly in Act V to perform a comic exchange with a fellow gravedigger before speaking to Hamlet and presenting him with the jester Yorick's skull. Our Gravedigger arrives with a trunk and a book and answers "questions" from the audience with pieces of text from Hamlet. Gravedigger's Tale is conceived and directed by Robert Richmond and performed by Louis Butelli (Romeo and Juliet, 2017).

Louis Butelli returns to WHAT after his critically acclaimed direction of Romeo and Juliet in 2017.

Folger Theatre: Mary Stuart, Julius Caesar (2014, 2000), Twelfth Night (Helen Hayes nomination), Henry V, Henry VIII (Helen Hayes Award), Othello. Shakespeare Theatre Company: The Taming of the Shrew. Regional theaters include: ART, South Coast Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Yale Repertory, Long Wharf Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Off- Broadway: Much Ado About Nothing, The Comedy of Errors, Agamemnon, Othello, Twelfth Night; The New Victory Theater: A Midsummer Night's Dream; 47th St. Theater and Ars Nova: CYCLOPS: A Rock Opera (also director, co-writer, NYMF Award, Pulitzer Jury nomination, 3 LA Weekly Award nominations). Television: The Knick, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The Unusuals, All My Children. Numerous national and international tours. Co-founder, Psittacus Productions.

Robert Richmond's credits include Julius Caesar, Richard III, Twelfth Night, Henry V, Othello, Henry VIII, Julius Caesar (2000) at Folger Theatre. As director of the Folger Shakespeare Library audio recordings: Julius Caesar, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Regional theaters include: The Lost Colony: The Lost Colony; La Jolla Playhouse; Denver Center for the Performing Arts; Two River Theater Company. Off-Broadway: Much Ado About Nothing, The Comedy Of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cyrano De Bergerac, The Iliad: Book One, King Lear, Twelfth Night, Agamemnon. Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina Theatre and Dance Department, Head of Undergraduate Performance. Directed Dreadful Sorry (written by Dionne O'Dell), winner of the South Carolina Film Commissions 2010 Production Grant. Education: Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

In addition to Friday-Sunday performances, the company will perform matinees for student groups from area schools, with a question and answer period following those performances. Tickets are $18 and may be purchased online at what.org, at the WHAT box office, or by calling 508-349-9428. Student tickets are $12.

Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater is the award-winning theater company that inspired "a new vigor for theater on the Cape" (New York Times). In honor of the theater's namesake, Julie Harris, WHAT continues to be a sounding board for new and bold ideas, presenting "continually adventurous theater" (Boston Globe), and year-round programming.

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