Vila Stanković, Čortanovci
Friday, 29. June at 20.00

PLEASE, CONTINUE (HAMLET)
Conception: Roger Bernat & Yan Duyvendak

Set design: in collaboration with Sylvie Kleiber
Graphic design: Marie-Klara Gonzalez; Nicolas Robel B.ü.L.b Grafix
Coordination: Helena Febrés Fraylich

CAST:
HAMLET / Aleksandar Milković
GERTRUDE / Svetlana Bojković
OPHELIA / Jelena Đulvezan Milković
Judge /  Dr Miodrag Majić
Prosecutor / Nikola Pantelić
Lawyer / Petar Učajev

Production: Dreams Come True, Genève

Co-production: Le Phénix, National Theatre of Valenciennes - Huis a/d Werf, Utrecht - Théâtre du GRÜ, Geneva- Elèctrica Produccions (Barcelona)

Residencies: Montévidéo, Marseille - Le Carré/Les Colonnes subsidised theatre, Saint-Médard-en-Jalles/Blanquefort

With the collaboration of the City of Geneva, the Republic and Canton of Geneva, the Pro HelvetiaSwiss foundation for culture, LoterieRomande (Switzerland), the Corodis Institute and INAEM (Labour Institute of the Government of Aragon) /Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture

About the play

What's your verdict? Does a court's decision depend on the judge's mood? On the lawyers' performance? Who is on the jury? How does your personal conviction take shape in the theatre of the courtroom? Real-life legal professionals are recruited locally to play for real in Hamlet's mock trial. Shakespeare's hero, revisited, stands accused of murdering Polonius. Eye-witness statements, pleas and counterpleas, expert witnesses - Please, Continue (Hamlet) brings the spectacle of the legal to the stage to create a courtroom drama that explores the eternally elusive question of what is truth.

Text: Eric Demey

Translation: Martin Striegel

… As a homicide trial unfolds, a young Hamlet stands accused of murdering Polonius. The case may sound like a familiar drama, but everything else here is the real deal. Actual barristers, a legitimate judge, court psychologists and QCs: this is no mock trial and no two performances are the same.

All play their part and they play to win, but the fate of a youth hangs in the balance, and in the end it’s a real jury—perhaps including you—who will decide Hamlet’s innocence or guilt.

With this dynamic and gripping work, Dutch and Spanish provocateurs Yan Duyvendak and Roger Bernat interrogate one of the defining institutions in our civic society, examining the lines between truth and justice, theatre and law.

Melbourne festival 2017.

Roger Bernat, Uncompleted studies of painting and architecture. Graduated with the 1996 Extraordinary award from the Direction and Dramaturgy program of the Institut del Teatre, Barcelona. Roger Bernat recovers documents: images, demonstrations, performances or historical testimonies to elaborate stagings that far from sacralizing documents show what those documents represent and at the same time, what they do today. In 2008 he started creating performances in which the audience takes the stage and becomes the protagonist. «Spectators go through a device that invites them to obey or conspire and in any case, to pay with their own bodies and commit»

Yan Duyvendak originally from the Netherlands, lives in Geneva and Marseille. Trained at the École cantonale d’art du Valais and the École supérieure d'art visuel de Genève, his career as a performance artist began in 1995 with the staging of his first work of live art, Keep It Fun For Yourself. His art underlines in particular how the overwhelming mass of televised, computer and mental images as well as our social codes and other rituals of our fun society thicken the curtain between ourselves and reality. Yet his work never fails to affirm human dignity and show the extent to which it is imperilled by our image-dominated society. His latest creations, Made In Paradise (2008), co-created with Omar Ghayatt and Nicole Borgeat, Please, Continue (Hamlet) (2011), co-created with Roger Bernat, as well as Sound of Music (2015) are no doubt his most politicial pieces to date.

Critiques

„Unmissable.“  LA TERRASSE PARIS

„It is, first and foremost, a fascinating conceit: an opportunity to see top-notch legal minds in action, but also to get something of an insight into how justice is administered.“ – The Guardian

theguardian.com