Diphtong

When producing Mariage de Gombrowiczm, I had the idea of staging Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Marriage as one of Hamlet’s dreams.
A satire of Hamlet ?

Inventing a language, parody in situations, the illusion of power, dreams intruding as projections of reality, all this that we find with Gombrowiczm, led me to Shakespeare.

This is the story of distrpution, of man’s self awareness, a projection of demons in the body and conscience of others.

Listening, dreaming, where am I ? Where is the other, what is the other, his own body resonates with fantasy and inaccessible projections of his father, mother, another dream, man...

Hubert COLAS

PRESS

Marseille’s director Hubert Colas guided the public into such a sublime state, it would never have wished to leave. […] Gentle, fine and intelligent, he permit the Elizabethan drama to breath unique life into the heart of each person. […] The Prince of Denmark, Hamlet’s tragic story as directed, adapted and produced by Hubert Colas, is a work of rare maturity and extreme elegance. The language is a firm but malleable ground, a territory on which everybody’s talent expresses itself. With Thierry Raynaud in the lead role as an imperial, facetious, temperamental, determined and intense Hamlet, this intimate and yet political drama is gripping and dizzying. […] So more and more we adore, ardently, passionately that subject, divided in equal shares by Hubert Colas. We could say that we are also the Christine Angots of literature : in love with the theatre that welcomes us, speaks and listens to us.

Joëlle Gayot, France Culture, 12th March 2005

‘Acting and ostentatiously showing it, the roguish actors surprise us with humour and insolence again and again. And adolescent emotion. Taking the risk of including insane images, scenes acted in French and English, dreamlike video images, near-fantastical mind games, along with unbelievable nudity, Hubert Colas consistently manages to guide us to the no-man’s land of forgotten impressions and buried dreams, that comes before life and after death. He touches upon strange mysteries. Bordering enlightenment... Nothing more to be said of this Hamlet, the 2005 yield from Avignon is already a fascinating success. ‘
Fabienne Pascaud, Télérama, 10th July 2005

The Hamlet staged by Hubert Colas at the Gymnase d’Aubanel in Avignon is fashioned out of the stuff that dreams and shadows are made of. The stuff of theatre as well, in the powers and beauty of its pretence, when the world is nothing more but lies, slow poisoning of the body and souls for corrupt use of words and things. […] And thus, since everything in the world is pretence, we come to the crux : the theatrical pretence that director Hubert Colas employs with a mind-blowing art plastics beauty. His set design is a sumptuous sketch that, apart from work by Daniel Janneteau and Stéphane Braunschweig, has nothing like it in French theatres today.

Fabienne Darge, Le Monde, 13th July 2005

Director and set design : Hubert COLAS

With : Patrick ALBENQUE, Geoffrey CAREY, Claire DELAPORTE ROJAS, Patricia GARCIA, Nicolas GUIMBARD, Mireille HERBSTMEYER, Pierre LANEYRIE, Boris LÉMANT, Isabelle MOUCHARD, Thierry RAYNAUD, Frédéric SCHULZ-RICHARD, Xavier TAVERA, Cyril TEXIER, Manuel VALLADE.

New Autumn cast 2006 : Anne Alvaro, Geoffrey CAREY, Sophie Delage, Claire DELAPORTE ROJAS,Philippe Duclos, Denis Eyriey, Nicolas GUIMBARD, Pierre LANEYRIE, Boris LÉMANT, Isabelle MOUCHARD, Thierry RAYNAUD, Frédéric SCHULZ-RICHARD, Xavier TAVERA, Cyril TEXIER.

Assistant producer : Sophie NARDONE
Costumes : Cidalia DA COSTA
Lighting : ENCAUSTIC
Video : Patrick LAFFONT
Video assistant : Emilie FOUILLOUX
Musical director : Jean-Marc MONTERA
Music : Arvo PÄRT, Aphex TWIN
Technician : Arié van EGMOND
Stage Manager : Thomas BERNAD
Sound Manager : Arnaud PILLON
Decor : Olivier ACHEZ, Eric APOLLONI, Souf BADRA, Thomas BERNAD, Stéphane BRISSET
Fencing master : Gaël QUIVRIN
Makeup and hair : Sophie NIESSERON
Work experience assistant to Producer : Tiphaine CAZENAVE
Work experience assistant to Director : Diego ARAMBURO (Bolivia)

Production : Diphtong Cie, le Théâtre National de Marseille la Criée, La Halle aux Grains - Scène nationale de Blois,Théâtre des Salins - Scène nationale de Martigues.

Performance at Théâtre National La Criée, Marseille, March 2005

With the artistic assistance of the Jeune Théâtre National and the support of l'Adami, la Spedidam, montévidéo, l'Alliance Française de La Paz (Bolivia), l'Ambassade de France in Bolivia and Air France.

Many thanks to l'Association Française d'Action Artistique (AFAA) and Anne Frémiot.

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(Translated by Hannah Jones)