Transforming Claudius’ Soliloquy to Stage Performance

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Transforming Claudius’ soliloquy to stage performance A soliloquy is a device often used in drama when a character speaks to him or her, relating thoughts and feelings, and thus also sharing them with the audience. Other characters, however, are not aware of what is being said. Claudius is the antagonist of Hamlet. Before the play takes place, Claudius murders his own brother, effectively stealing the throne, and marries his brother’s wife: “but two months dead, -- nay, not so much, not two”. Just before his soliloquy, Claudius witnessed Hamlet’s actors put on a play showing how the death of his father occurred. We see Claudius as well as his reaction to this. ‘Act 3 Scene 3’ is the extract of Hamlet, which I chose to convert from text into performance. I will portray the character “Claudius” whilst he is having a dilemma and conflict with himself. In this soliloquy, Claudius Since all of the 7 actors were male, and only 3 having done GCSE drama, we decided to be experimental. We decided to incorporate basketball into our workshop performance of Hamlet. The workshop performance was set out as a basketball game to create a more competitive atmosphere: 6 different actors performing different soliloquies, and one Claudius (me) performing his soliloquy. We adopted the idea of using the concept of Claudius being Hamlet’s “opposition”. Since 6 actors were each delivering a different soliloquy, we formed the play to represent an actual basketball game; 6 Hamlets against 1 Claudius. Each Hamlet soliloquy has a different actor. We felt that each one of Hamlet’s soliloquies represents Hamlet at a different stage in his journey for vengeance. By using 6 actors, they could focus on that particular soliloquy, and study what Hamlet would have been feeling and thinking. As Claudius, I felt that I should have been involved in all the soliloquies in one way or

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