Hamlet, or about Death: A Romanian Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur (2001)

Authors

  • Monica Matei-Chesnoiu Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.20.05

Keywords:

geocriticism, Hamlet, Vlad Mugur, Shakespeare production, Shakespeare in Romania, spatial manipulation

Abstract

This essay looks at the 2001 Romanian production of Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur at the Cluj National Theatre (Romania) from the perspective of geocriticism and spatial literary studies, analysing the stage space opened in front of the audiences. While the bare stage suggests asceticism and alienation, the production distances the twenty-first century audiences from what might have seemed difficult to understand from their postmodern perspectives. The production abbreviates the topic to its bare essence, just as a map condenses space, in the form of “literary cartography” (Tally 20). There is no room in this production for baroque ornaments and theatrical flourishing; instead, the production explores the exposed depth of human existence. The production is an exploration of theatre and art, of what dramatists and directors can do with artful language, of the theatre as an exploration of human experience and potential. It is about the human condition and the artist’s place in the world, about old and new, about life and death, while everything happens on the edge of nothingness. The director’s own death before the opening night of the production ties Shakespeare’s Hamlet with existential issues in an even deeper way than the play itself allows us to expose.

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Author Biography

Monica Matei-Chesnoiu, Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania

Monica Matei-Chesnoiu is Professor of Shakespeare and early modern English literature at Ovidius University of Constanta (Romania). She is the author of Geoparsing Early Modern English Drama (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Re-imagining Western European Geography in English Renaissance Drama (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Early Modern Drama and the Eastern European Elsewhere: Representations of Liminal Locality in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), and Shakespeare in the Romanian Cultural Memory, with an introduction by Arthur F. Kinney (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006). She is a Fulbright Fellow (1998-1999), Humboldt Fellow (2009-2010), and SCIEX Fellow (2013-2014). Monica Matei-Chesnoiu is editor of five volumes of essays about Shakespeare in Romania (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2016) and director of the project Shakespeare in the Romanian Cultural Memory (2005-2008). Her main interests incorporate geocriticism and spatial literary studies, including representations of space, place, and geography in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Monica Matei-Chesnoiu is member of the International Committee of Correspondents for the World Shakespeare Bibliography and has served in the Advisory Board of Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance. She has been a PhD supervisor in English Literature since 2014.

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Published

2019-12-30

How to Cite

Matei-Chesnoiu, M. (2019). Hamlet, or about Death: A Romanian Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur (2001). Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 20(35), 51–60. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.20.05