A free version “about Hamlet” -with a Santiago face, between the theatrical and the cinematographic- contributes this cultural action of the Chilean National Theater (TNCH), released this year within the framework of the 178th Anniversary of the University of Chile.
Along with showing a line of institutional scenic work that seeks to respond to the new creative demands imposed by the historical stage that the country is experiencing, the proposal is a new contemporary rereading of the most classic of Shakespeare’s characters, within the so-called post-dramatic theater.
In the version of Keim, 18-minute short film, Hamlet is played by an actress who experiences a total crisis of meaning on stage that leads her to leave the role, leave the stage, go out onto the streets and immerse herself in the urban, social, political and historical reality that you live in the capital.
An option that does not only involve her: it also carries a certain perception of Hamlet, in addition to catching the reflection of the Chilean author-director who pushes this audiovisual story, through texts and images that collect their experiences and point of view.
Thus, Keim’s version is framed by questioning the stage writing and decomposing the traditional dramatic structure, while the poetic and autonomous components of the new discourse are weaving together a kind of collage of words, images and meaning.
Multiple crossing
The post-dramatic stage trend, which emerged between the 60s and 80s, suggests that the text is not the main element of the structure of a work, but rather part of a relationship with other stage elements, forming a diversity of languages, the result of which is a fragmentation , far from the concepts of unity, totality, hierarchy and coherence.
However, neither the unexpected nor the pessimism regarding the future and the destiny of the people and the country are filtered when focusing on “Normal Day” to this Hamlet, installed in Santiago’s territory.
When the actress makes her journey through the great city -Barrio Cívico, Mapocho River, Plaza de la Dignidad, among other places- she drags all kinds of information and an attitude where curiosity is associated with the desire to reveal what is happening around her .
During the journey, as if it were a dream, he intermingles the present with other times, past and future, without generating a definite story about the circumstances that Chile lives, without losing sight of the Hamletian period as a reference, in addition to absorbing fears and hopes in inside his shocked spirit.
Although the streets show a dislocated physiognomy, walls saturated with images, police vehicles that control and threaten, expressions of all kinds of popular art, in short, a city whose cement shell suffers from the struggles, the impact for the actress seems to come from the symbols that survive.
Inside and outside the theater
The monument of President Allende in the Plaza de la Constitución, whose face is shown in the foreground, picks up streaks of tragedy and drama, while the director’s voice-over delivers a poetic vision with crushing edges and the intention of a demiurge.
Al “Disgusted by the verbiage” that accentuates the locution is added nausea for “poverty without dignity, the hope of generations drowned in blood, cowardice and stupidity.”
Expressions such as “Hail Coca Cola” and “My kingdom for a murderer”, along with extending the surface of this metaphorical collage by specifying the surface, amplify the peripheral vision of a ubiquitous speaker, a sounding board for marches, mobilizations and night fires.
Back in the theater, on the cot and in Hamlet’s wardrobe, the actress synthesizes her experience by assuring that “my disgust is a privilege protected by barbed wire and jail” and that “Somewhere they are breaking bodies so that I can live”.
At the same time, he tries to invalidate himself when he decides not to “eat, drink, breathe, love”, not want to “die or kill” and only settle in the labyrinths of a “Dwell in my veins, in my bones, in my skull”.
They are an approach that seems to have a meaning different from the literal one: the Chilean actress and her prince from Santiago seem to propose an ethic of times of rebellion, which implies loss, but also recovery of identities.
On the other hand, by rejecting conventional scenic units, the proposal reaffirms the value of direct experience, through a reconstructive performance that alludes to ruin and destruction as a preamble to births and rebirths.
“I want to be a machine, arms to grasp, legs to walk,” says the actress in her leisurely delirium, perhaps on the verge of overcoming the denial of existence by fighting oblivion and the desire to change bitter reality, banishing the hollow verbiage that surrounds everything.
In this sense, Keim’s proposal stands out for the possibility of constructing a new history as a consequence of the antagonistic presence of the mobilized majorities that provide a different context to the eternal individual-collective dialogue that becomes inseparable, away from hierarchies, forming a same textual, sonorous, ethical and utopian territory.
And, if everything seems to be just a dream of the authors and the actress-Hamlet, the powerful sound that accompanies from beginning to end, at whose rhythm the city moves, screams and scares on this “normal day”, concludes with dozens hands with stones hitting the metal walls that protect the Telefónica, one of the symbols of the economic power that we want to defeat in our country.
NORMAL DAY
Direction: Cristian Keim.
Script: Sebastián Cárez-Lorca.
Interpreter: Belén Herrera Cámara and edition: Aquiles Poblete.
Direct sound: Joaquín Riquelme Design: Willy Ganga.
Sound post production: Sebastián Chávez.
Production: Claudio Martínez.
Free access
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