Written & Directed by Alberto Ierardi, Giorgio Vierda and Adrian Hughes
Written & Directed:
Alberto Ierardi
Giorgio Vierda
Adrian Hughes
HAMLET DOUBLE BILL
3 actors in 2 plays of 1 act, riffing on HAMLET:
1) The Play’s The Thing or “To be: Hamlet Retold”The Rest is Silence or “Not to be: Hamlet Revisited”
2) The Rest is Silence or “Not to be: Hamlet Revisited”
Both written, directed and played by Alberto Ierardi, Giorgio Vierda and Adrian Hughes
Production La Ribalta Teatro/English Theatre Company
Why “Double Bill”? Well the idea is to give voice to two different points of view of the Hamlet story: that of the Gravediggers and of the Players. Gravediggers and Players are the material executors of the fate that revolves around Elsinore: they represent the beginning and the end of Hamlet's story. They open and close the dances. If the Players are the spark that ignites in Hamlet the idea of unmasking King Claudius through the staging of what happened at the Danish court, the Gravediggers are the end of the suffering of the characters in the text, as they ascertain the end, relative and absolute, of Hamlet's vicissitudes. If the Players are the inventors of life and its possible plots, the gravediggers are the custodians of death and the end of the characters' lives. And it is precisely this unconscious importance they hold throughout the text that makes them, unbeknownst to themselves, such comic characters.
"The Rest is Silence" is darker, creepier, with the macabre and bleak atmospheres of Hamlet's text (after all, the relationship with the world of death is always present): ghostly apparitions, murders, skeletons and suicides are the main characters throughout the story. "The Rest is Silence" begins at the end of Hamlet's text. In the churchyard where they laid Ophelia to rest, the gravediggers are digging again. They must now inter Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes (to say nothing of Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern) before the day is done. Fortinbras, the new King, commanded it. Whilst they dig, they catch, as if on the wind, fragments of the words and thoughts of those who once were ‘too, too solid flesh’. The gravediggers know all too well though, that ‘all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.’ And so the characters of Hamlet revive momentarily and relive their actions.
"The Play's The Thing", on the other hand, is characterised by a decidedly different slant: brilliant, comically full of stumbles and flops, of mistakes and reinterpretations of the story itself, fantastic and full of actions of play within a play. After the dubious success of The Mousetrap at the court of King Hamlet, the players are on the road again with their latest production: “The Play’s The Thing!”. ‘Holding, as t’were, the mirror up to nature’, they also know that time is of the essence, and no audience has the time or patience to sit through three and a half hours of 400-year-old English verse. The players must be quick and clever to keep their audiences enthralled, while they are telling their version of the Hamlet’s story.
On stage only three actors and two languages: Italian and English.
So continues the linguistic and stylistic research of the trio, born from the fusion of two different theatrical experiences, La Ribalta Teatro and The English Theatre Company.
The linguistic difference, which in the two plays corresponds to a social difference, will itself be a source of conflict and comedy, creating a multi-layered performance: both rich and complex, and simple and essential.
Giorgio Vierda
In 2012 he graduated from Civica Accademia d’Arte Drammatica Nico Pepe of Udine. In 2013 he played in the show Mistero Buffo e Altre Storie by Dario Fo, directed by Massimo Navone. He continued his theatre education in Paris with the French master and clown Philippe Gaulier, he founded an international Clowning and Physical Theatre company, the Plague of Idiots, guest at the Fringe Festivals of Perth and Adelaide (Australia) and Edinburgh (Scotland). In 2014 he founded the company La Ribalta Teatro (winner and finalist of several awards) of which he is the artistic director, as well as actor, director and script writer. He works at la Ribalta Teatro and Teatrino dei Fondi of San Miniato.
Alberto Ierardi
He made his debut in 2009 with the English choreographer and director Lindsay Kemp. In 2012 he graduated from Accademia d’Arte Drammatica Nico Pepe of Udine. In 2013 he completed the advanced training course at Paolo Grassi of Milano, he played in Mistero Buffo e Altre Storie by Dario Fo, directed by Massimo Navone (2013), in La Prima Cena by Michele Santeramo, directed by Michele Sinisi (2015), and in Rome e Giulietta directed by “Giardino delle Ore” (2021). In 2014 he founded the company La Ribalta Teatro (winner and finalist of several theatre awards), of which he is artistic director, as well as actor, director and script writer. He collaborated as professor at Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica Nico Pepe of Udine. He works at La Ribalta Teatro and Teatrino dei Fondi of San Miniato.
La Ribalta Teatro originates from the artistic collaboration of Alberto Ierardi and Giorgio Vierda who met at the Accademia Nico Pepe of Udine, where they graduated, sharing Brecht’s motto "recreating the audience by proposing, on the one hand, a slovenly sneering and, on the other, civil attention to global issues". The original duo evolved into La Ribalta Teatro, a theatre company operating in two areas: production and creation of contemporary drama live performances and theatre training courses. Since 2019 the company has undertaken a work of study and artistic research, aimed at the realisation of a trilogy of theatre shows dedicated to the relationship between humans and the environment.
The English Theatre Company was established in Pisa in 2011. Its core members, however, have worked together for over 25 years in England, Europe, and South Africa. The flexible ensemble includes established and young professional actors from both English-speaking and Italian theatrical backgrounds. The company has toured extensively in Italy, as far north as Milan and as far south as Pompeii.
Adrian Hughes is an actor, a director, and a classically trained dancer. He is a founding member of The English Theatre Company. He graduated with a Performer’s Diploma in Speech and Drama from UCT Drama School (Cape Town, South Africa), and received his Masters degree in Contemporary Performance Making & Theatre Directing from Brunel University (London, UK). Plays include: Frankenspeare, Waiting For Juliet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare Unplugged (all with The English Theatre Company); Big Boys (Croydon Warehouse, off West End, London); Boy Meets Boy (Market Theatre, South Africa); Dario Fo’s Elizabeth I (Grahamstown Festival); Trick (with Zip Zap Circus); The Blue House(Teatro Agorà, Rome); Narrow Rooms. Performance improvisation: Theatresports (South Africa); Off The Cuff (London); Match di Improvvisazione Teatrale (Italy). He wrote and directed “Sad Since Tuesday” which was invited to Escrita Na Paisagem (Evora) & Festival Y (Covilhã) in Portugal. Roles in training include: The Marat/Sade; A Little Hotel on The Side; Twelfth Night; The Trial; Blood on The Cat’s Neck; The Possibilities; Quartet; and The Bacchae.
english 
srpski