Performers - Part 27

 Hamlet

Shakespeare in the park is nothing new for New Yorkers.  But in 2017, Torn Out Theater presented a nude version of Hamlet in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Central Park in Manhattan.  Jake Austin Robertson (at center) played Hamlet.

The theater company does projects that "push the boundaries of how we see the human body and what we assume about modern sexuality."

This version was not only nude, but the cast was all-male.  Ophelia was played by Marcus Stewart, above.  Ironically, this is ultra-traditional.  In Shakespeare's time, women weren't allowed to act on the stage, and all of the female parts in his plays were played by male actors.  Of course, they weren't naked.

Mike Press played Laertes.

And Giordano Cruz played Hamlet's friend Horatio.

The actors all started out clothed and then gradually lost their clothes.  Here's Hamlet with two others, maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who seem to be in the process of losing their pants.

"To be (naked) or not to be (naked)?  That is the question."

"Get thee to a nunnery!"

Nude public performances are legal in New York, but only performances, not rehearsals, so the cast had to rehearse indoors.  The first time they got naked in public was at the first performance.

"Alas, poor Yorick!  I knew him, Horatio."

At the end of the play, Laertes (above) and Hamlet fight and mortally wound each other.

But let's end on a more upbeat note.  To quote Hamlet: "What a piece of work is a man!"