User:Lathompson/sandbox

General History

The Hamnet Players were founded in 1993 by Stuart Harris, an Englishman living in San Diego, California, a former actor, computer professional and author of computer manuals. In December 1993 they debuted the concept of internet theatre with their debut production of "Hamnet", a parody of William Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", followed later in April 1994 with their second production of "PCbeth: an IBM clone of Macbeth,", another parody of a Shakespeare play, this time using "Macbeth". In February 1995 they moved away from Shakespeare and used the plot of the Tennessee Williams's play "A Streetcar Named Desire", to create their third original piece "An IRC Channel Named #desire". The Hamnet Players performances are a form of vitual theatre, first of all, because they are focused gatherings, just like face-to-face encounters. Although participants could not see one another and their bodies were not co-present to one another, they cooperated to sustain a single focus of attention, taking turns at talking.

The name "Hamnet Players" is rich in cultural resonances. A "ham" is "an ineffective or overemphatic actor, one who rants or overacts" . Thus, besides being an obvious pun on "Hamlet", the expression invites association to "hamming it up on the Net"; behaving in an exaggerated, theatrical fashion while logged onto the Internet. Another meaning of "ham" is also pertinent, in that "ham radio", un-institutionalized mediated radio communication, run by amateurs, outside the formal broadcasting framework. Ham radio culture shares with hacker culture, as well as with Net culture. Another association is to a son of Shakespeare, called Hamnet, who died at the age of 11 on August 11, 1596. Hamnet, had been named after a friend of Shakespeare's, who was present at Shakespeare's funeral and was remembered in his will.

Past Productions

Hamnet, 1st production (12th December 1993)

Hamnet, 2nd production (6th February 1994)

PCBeth (an IBM clone of Macbeth), 1st production (23rd April 1994)

PCBeth (an IBM clone of Macbeth), 2nd production (10th July 1994)

An IRC channel named #desire, 1st production (30th October 1994)

An IRC channel named #desire, 2nd production (12th February 1995)

PCBeth (an IBM clone of Macbeth)

PCBeth was The Hamnet Players second production, which was premiered on the 23rd April 1994, which would have been Shakespeare's 430th birthday. The production was a 160-line pastiche which pioneered the use of virtual images in the form of JPEG files. The images were offered by the producers for those who had the ability to recieve and display them. PCBeth was re-staged on 10th July 1994, as a 'festival' production. This second production had some VIP stars and audio effects.

The first production had 21 members of cast and crew, who were based all across the world ranging from London, UK, to Tel Aviv, and South Africa. The starring roles of "PCBeth" and "LadyM" were played by "Gazza" based in Bath, Somerset, and "Fem" who was based in Fairbanks. The plot line had been preserved, however the text had been modernised to keep the modern audience engaged. The second production had 15 members of cast and crew. Again, for this production, the cast and crew were based all across the globe from Vancouver to Jerusalem. The lead role of "PCBeth" was played by "Cubby" based in Vancouver and LadyM was played by "AlmaW" based in Lexington, Virginia.

An IRC channel named #desire

"An IRC channel named #desire" was the 3rd performance produced by The Hamnet Players. It was performed twice, once in October 1994 and again in February 1995. The performances consisted of 28 members of cast and crew. The three starring roles were played by, Heather Wagner, who played Blanche, Gayle Kidder, who played Stella, and Gary 'Gazza' Hunt, who played 'Big Slob Stanley'. As with all the performances which The Hamnet players have produced, all of the cast and crew were based all across the world during the performance, with the three main cast members being located in Bath, New York and San Diego.

For this peroformance The Hamnet Players moved away from Shakespeare for the first time, and this time used the Tennessee Williams play 'A Streetcar Named Desire', as the plot basis for their performance.

Style of Performance

Every performance which The Hamnet Players produce uses Internet Relay Chat (IRC) software and worldwide links. Each line of the full script is numbered in sequence. After casting, actors are given their own lines and cues by email, and no rehearsal is allowed. This ensures that it is only the production team that knows how the performance will unfold when presented in IRC. In previous productions inventive performers, delivering their lines via keyboard, have found ways of not only suggesting theatrical emotion, but adapting also their lines.

The Hamnet Players were of the first groups to challenge the conventional dichotomy between "live" and "mediated" performances. The Hamnet Players performances shared most of the characteristics that an acclaimed practitioner, Richard Schechner ascribes to "live unmediated performance", as is attested by this public relations statement prepared by Stuart Harris:

True to the concept of theatre, the production is presented in real time with live performers and audience, with all the opportunities for spontaneous genius and imminent disaster that entails. The debut performance of "Hamnet" was interrupted by a thunderstorm which cut the producers’ online access; the play had to be restarted after the producers logged back on via Taiwan. The second performance was enlivened by a "bot" which accidentally killed Hamlet halfway through the production.

The Hamnet Players performances were characterized by contingency and suspense. The challenge to maintain the focus online may be greater than in a conventional theatre space, but perhaps not more so than in outdoor theatre. Two main factors foster, this sense of contingency, the vulnerability of the technology to breakdown, evident in Harris’s comments, and the distractions of other conversations, of people "coming and going."

Language of the Performances

The Hamnet Players activities were performances in two distinct but complimentary senses. First, they were scheduled, programmed events, whose centrepiece was the theatre-like performances of a script. There were roles, cues, "sets", and a plot to be realized from beginning to end. The pieces also had a producer, director and stage manager to keep things in hand, which are all components we associate with conventional theatre. The style of the performance means that there is not so much "acting" happening on the screen, but more pieces the different parts of the script coming together.

The most obvious contrast between "Hament" scripts and that of Shakespeares' was the archaic literary language of the Renaissance English from Shakespeare's original plays, and the colloquial, often slang, register of contemporary Anglo-American English. The "Hamnet" scripts contained, not only parts for leading characters, but also for "Enter", "Exit", "Prologue", "Scene", and even inanimate objects like "Drums" and "Colours". Among these "textual" roles, that of "Prologue," at least, was not entirely Harris’s invention. The script includes these "roles" because the players actually perform, not only the play but the text aswell. When all actors perform their lines, they recreate the text online. One of the characters in the play-within-a-play in the original "Hamlet" is also called "Prologue." Due to the nature of the online IRC performance, the number of named characters in "Hamnet" is greatly smaller to the origional number in the Shakespeare play. There were only 7 named characters "Hamnet" whereas there were 8 more in the origional. Some characters are limited to one or two lines, for example "Polonius" is reduced to a single death cry.

The "PCbeth" script was mainly rewritten in IRC-ese and contemporary colloquial English. Only rarely did Gayle Kidder, the writer, contrast the original with contemporary language, as in:

Is this a dagger I see before me? Crikes this castle’s spooky at night! [34]

Both the "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" parodies relayed by The Hamnet Players, spoofed, IRC, email, and other Internet conventions and practices. A striking example in "Hamnet" was the line:

<Hamlet> Oph: suggest u /JOIN #nunnery [27]

Instead of "get thee to a nunnery", Hamlet is made to tell Ophelia to join an IRC channel named #nunnery. The script cites the IRC command/join. Ordinarily, the slash is necessary to activate the command online; here, of course its only function is to make a joke.

In Scene 1 of "PCbeth", PCbeth and Banquo enter, "armoured for KICK/BAN/DE-OP wars." Their wars are fought with three IRC commands; /kick removes a person temporarily from a channel, /ban prevents him or her from returning and de-op is a variant of the notion chanop or "channel operator", which is a person given certain privileges in managing a channel. To de-op someone is to deprive them of these privileges.