You ever just feel COMPELLED to play Hamlet, so you throw together a digital cabaret around it?

I haven’t done any Shakespeare  in a very, very long time.  But I do have the motive and cue.

I’m remembering how when I was in college, I was always cast as men and women too old to have children. This was a time, too, when acting schools would only select about 1/3rd women for their programs to “reflect the opportunities available to them in real life.” They were open about it, and for some reason we all accepted it. I remember complaining to a teacher quite innocently that this seemed like it would make a system where women always have fewer, more limited parts, if we weren’t educating women in graduate schools, which, I was assured, would be the only way to get work.

Graduate school auditions came and I did a monologue from El Cid about vengeance–either my father killed my boyfriend or vice versa–I don’t remember. But I do remember that my adjudicator said, “Why are you so angry?”

Be…because my boyfriend killed my father (or something) and…I’m seeking vengeance?

I didn’t get in.

Over the years, I’ve gotten this note from men a lot. But they tend to skip that note when I’m playing a man. Men are supposed to be angry, you see. Women are supposed to cry.

It took me a very long time to realize this was by design, for I was assured that the fault lay with me. But it always seemed crazy that we prescribe this–weren’t we supposed to be discovering the truth of what we are on stage? How can you be so sure that I am wrong that a woman would be angry, when I am a woman, and I am angry? Some men make a whole career off of that one emotion.

It was frustrating, but I took it time and time again as the feelings of one silly person, some old leftover custom, some misunderstanding on the part of ignorant casting directors, and even that there was something wrong with me as a woman–perhaps I was unnatural. It never occurred to me that the theatre was actively trying to diminish women. But of course they were.

I dropped out of school and moved to Chicago. I auditioned and studied Meisner at a lauded little equity theatre. But there was just nothing going anywhere but storefronts and underground places. The very last audition I went to was for a production of “Bikini Shakespeare,” meaning, “It’s just fucking Shakespeare, but everyone is in a bikini.” It was just stupid. And I realized I was fighting tooth and nail for shows that don’t pay me, degrade me, and have nothing to do with what I wanted to do in the theatre.

So I left my first love: “THE theatre,” and started trying to figure out how to create something new on my own in the underground.

But I find this play very important in these times. It’s all about suddenly being called upon to lead, to fight, to avenge–when you are ill prepared, have led a soft life, and do not know if you have in you what you are called upon to do. The depression hinders you. The self loathing at inaction hinders you further. But the time is now, and the situation calls for more than words, words, words. Hamlet knows what we’re all going through.

I’m still putting together the cabaret, but I hope you enjoy these clips along the way.

And if you want to support my ability to keep doing my work, I am still desperately trying to put funds together to get a trailer and land and could use your support! You can prepurchase tickets for the digital cabaret here. It’s pay-what-you-will with a suggested donation of a ticket price, $25. My hope is to raise $5,000–very doable –and it will keep two people and three cats off the street, so anything you can spare to support me and the work I do is much needed and appreciated!

Donate here