Ira Glass
From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. OK. Here's something that we did not expect. Check this out. This was recorded on a stage in Brooklyn, St. Francis College.

Male Actor 1
To be or not to be, that is the question.

Ira Glass
Same month in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu.

Male Actor 2
To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.

Ira Glass
Same month, a professional company in Boston, Massachusetts at the Public Theater.

Male Actor 3
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.

Ira Glass
In Colorado at Camp Shakespeare. You can actually hear the sneakers of the teenaged Hamlet squeaking.

Male Actor 4
Why do you go about to recover the wind of me?

Female Actor 1
Oh, my lord. If my duty be too bold--

Ira Glass
And at the Bay Area Shakespeare Camp presented by the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, the kids put on a production they have concocted that is made up entirely of death scenes from different Shakespeare plays. Death scenes because kids love death scenes.

Female Actor 2
No, no, the drink, the drink. Oh, my dear Hamlet, the drink, the drink, I am poisoned. [WRETCHING]

Ira Glass
Eight-year-old Marissa Graham grabs her throat like a cat in a violent cartoon. Everyone in the production is eight, except for Polonius, who's six.

Female Actor 3
The rest is silent.

[APPLAUSE]

Ira Glass
There's actually no way to tell how many productions of Hamlet are up in any given month. In summer 2002, when we first broadcast today's show and we made these recordings, the American theater website listed 12 theaters during Shakespeare's Hamlet, 11 productions of the play, I Hate Hamlet, one production of something called Hamlet Dreams, and one theater doing the dreadful and feared, Hamlet Machine.

Of course, Hamlet itself is kind of a weird play. The central character is in a situation that very few of us are ever going to find ourselves in. His uncle killed his father and then married his mother in order to become the king. The play is four hours long. The main conflict of the play is a guy debating in long, complicated monologues, whether or not he should kill somebody. What is there in that for most of us to relate to? Unless, of course, we happen to be murderers. And what would the play be like if it were actually performed by murderers and other violent criminals? What would they see that the rest of us do not? Well, today on our program we answer that question. And the answer is, a lot.

Over the course of six months, reporter Jack Hitt visited prisoners at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center-- it is a high security prison-- from their first rehearsal to their last performance of Act Five of Shakespeare's Hamlet. We're devoting our entire program today to the drama that he found there. Our program today, "Act Five." We bring you what we believe is one of the most evocative productions of Shakespeare done anywhere in 2002, one that you would have had a hard time getting tickets to. It is only performed in prison. Here's Jack Hitt.

Jack Hitt
The first thing they hand me when I pass through the thick iron doors is a tiny black box called a screamer. Pull the cord attached and a phalanx of armed guards will sweep from all points of the prison and try to rescue me. I keep it in my pocket as I enter a huge yard with more than 1,000 prisoners wandering around. Some of the guys are playing handball against walls. Some are lifting weights as I walk across. Most are friendly. A couple of the skinheads, their arms dense with spider tattoos, narrow their eyes as I pass.

Across the yard there's a big building. A long corridor leads to a door marked, education annex. Inside, there's room D-168 where a small, white-haired woman, Agnes Wilcox, is holding auditions for Hamlet.

Agnes Wilcox
Let me see. If you're not Hamlet, Horatio, Laertes, Claudius or Fortinbras, would you write down roles that interest you? Those roles are Clown One and Two, we've got Osric--

Jack Hitt
Dressed in loose prison uniforms, the actors sit around tables in this cinderblock classroom beneath inspirational slogans-- "Believe in yourself," "Think positively." The aspiring cast is half black, half white, and ranges from young life-ers in their 20s to old-timers in their 50s. Because it's against the rules to congregate an audience of felons for the four hours it would take to perform the whole play, Agnes has staged one act every six months starting in December, 1999. Tonight is the first read-through for Act Five, the final bloody climax. Many of the inmates here never finished high school. And all they had known of Shakespeare was the phrase, "To be or not to be." Tonight they are hearing some of the other famous speaches for the first time.

Danny As The Gravedigger
A pestilence on him for a mad rouge--

Agnes Wilcox
Rogue.

Danny As The Gravedigger
Rogue. He poured a flax--

Agnes Wilcox
Flagon--

Danny As The Gravedigger
A flagon of--

Agnes Wilcox
Rhenish.

Danny As The Gravedigger
--Rhenish on my head once. The same skull, sir, was sure Yorick's skull, the King's jester.

Inmate As Hamlet
Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy--

Jack Hitt
Most read-throughs with any cast are terrible. This one is terrible too. The actors know it. But they plow on through the script. An inmate named Paul, who serves as Agnes' Assistant Director, explains why.

Paul
The first two or three acts I thought, oh no, there's no way. There's no way we're going to get this thing down and go and do a live performance and-- do a soliloquy two pages long? I said there's-- no, no, this is impossible. But we're learning here, I guess from performing it and hearing it done time again, was it'll be OK. It'll work out.

Jack Hitt
The local critics agreed with Paul. The Act Four performance earned a review in the St. Louis paper. The actors were said to be commanding and compelling. "With the entire performance," the reviewer wrote, "A 400-year-old text is restored to freshness." It seemed hard to imagine.

I've seen Hamlet a dozen times. I've seen Kevin Kline do it at the Public Theater. I saw the famous Diane Venora version three nights in a row. I even saw Ingmar Bergman's production done in Brooklyn, performed entirely in Swedish. What else was there to learn from watching another Hamlet? But the truth is, this production was different because this is a play about a man pondering a violent crime and its consequences, performed by violent criminals living out those consequences. After hanging out with this group of convicted actors for six months, I did discover something, I didn't know anything about Hamlet.

Remember how it starts. Hamlet sees his father's ghost who explains he was murdered by Claudius, Hamlet's uncle. The ghost commands Hamlet to avenge his death by killing Claudius. The play is basically Hamlet pondering this single, horrific action and whether he can be the man to do it. To be or not to be.

These days, when people say the name, Hamlet, it's usually just a metaphor, shorthand for somebody who is afraid to act, who dithers and thinks too much. We almost forget just what action Hamlet was contemplating. These actors haven't forgotten.

My name is Manuel Johnson and I'm 36 years old. I'm here for two first degree assaults. I play Hamlet.

Jack Hitt
When you're onstage doing Hamlet, what do you draw upon in your own experience to make the character come to life?

The idea of wanting to hurt someone. I have experienced hurting someone to the point of their life may be in danger. I was a very confused and angry person. And it escalated to me shooting two people and leaving them for dead.

Chris Harris
My name is Chris Harris. I'm 38 years old. And I play the fourth character of Hamlet.

Jack Hitt
Let me explain something. The character of Hamlet is played by four people. They're all on stage at the same time, taking turns delivering the lines. Agnes did this partly to give more actors speaking roles and not saddle any one man with all that dialogue. But as theater, it works. Hamlet's role is full of long soliloquies and rhetorical asides. This small gang of Hamlets which mutters to itself and laughs at its own jokes nicely captures that fractured quality of Hamlet's different personalities. And it's also bonded the four actors together. They call themselves the Hamlets and constantly talk about their character. To Chris, it seems like Hamlet is just the fifth guy in their odd clique, another criminal with a complicated past.

Chris Harris
Let me put it in terms of the year 2000. So what we have is an upper middle class youngster-- 19, 20 years old-- who comes from a well-to-do family. They own quite a bit of land. The people in the small town respect him and love him. And his uncle murdered his father and is now married to his mother. So all kinds of serious issues there. All kinds.

Jack Hitt
Chris and the Hamlets practice alone most days. Finding time when the four can just get together by themselves is tough when there's always a thousand inmates around. So they do it where they can.

Chris Harris
On every Sunday after the noon meal, the four of us will assemble. We'll have our little gray Hamlet books and we'll proceed down to the track. And if you are simply walking by, what you'd probably hear is-- you'd hear this chatter of somebody giving their lines clearly, the rest of us with our heads down in the books walking the line. Now, there are people, because there are benches that are all throughout the inside of the track. So there are people that actually watch us. So you'll hear this old, English style speech. You know, "Ho, Horatio," and these people are like, ho, what?

Jack Hitt
One of the problems of doing any play in prison is that being a good actor is the exact emotional opposite of what it takes to be a successful inmate. Rather than close off all feeling and look tough, you have to open your vulnerable self up and withstand often cruel laughter as you try to find some authentic emotion within you. In this way, a level four, high-security prison is no different from high school. And so, most of the inmates who audition for Agnes tend to be, actor-y people. The theater types of prison.

Back in 1999, they just had to put up with abuse from the bigger, meaner inmates. But that changed. In fact, a lot changed after Agnes cast the role of Hamlet's best friend.

Big Hutch
My name is Derek "Big Hutch" Hutchinson. I play Horatio, the scholar.

Jack Hitt
You might be surprised to learn that Derek "Big Hutch" Hutchinson is big. He has a smooth, bald skull and hooded, threatening eyes, the kind of guy that if you met him you might think, he's probably serving 120 years for armed robberies. And that would be correct. Hutch isn't like the rest of the cast. And he's the first person to tell you.

Big Hutch
In prison, you got this hierarchy system. Listen, let's compare it to the ocean. You got the minnows and you got the killer whale. Minnows being the lowest, killer whale the highest.

Jack Hitt
So, which are you, Big Hutch?

Big Hutch
I'm the blue whale. That means I control the killer whales and I can eat up the minnows if I want. And I mean, that's how it is. Most of the guys in Hamlet, they're minnows. I mean, I don't normally would associate with them.

Tim
Well, as he puts it, the killer whale versus the guppies. We're all guppies and he's the killer whale.

Jack Hitt
That's Tim who plays Osric. And as a minnow, slash guppy, his take is a little different.

Timothy Lance
In dealing with an individual like a killer whale, a lot of it's-- even for him it's a lot of show. The guys see him out on the yard, all right. And now, some of the guys that have come into Hamlet see him how he is in acting and the seriousness that he takes. He's not what his persona is.

Jack Hitt
In other words, he's an actor. But Big Hutch is also a critic. His criticism is sharp and extends to places most actors avoid, his own character, Horatio.

Big Hutch
I think he's a chump, for real.

Jack Hitt
Really, why?

Big Hutch
Yeah, I think he's a chump. I mean, he's supposed to be cool with Hamlet and they're best friends. But I think Horatio is just somebody-- a sounding board for Hamlet. I mean, the majority of his lines are "Aye, m'lord." "Yes, m'lord." I mean, if we're friends, we're going to communicate better than that. I mean, you're going to tell me your deepest secrets. I want to know what you and Ophelia did last night.

I believe he should have been a little bit-- show me that I'm truly Hamlet's friend. Don't wait 'til I get to the end of Act Five and I'm getting ready to drink a cup of poison and you stop me. You know, let me know down the line, man, that I'm really your friend.

Jack Hitt
Have you ever heard anybody talk about Shakespeare's characters this way? Hutch was always doing this, talking tough, but then betraying a real gift for literary criticism, call it his inner minnow. In fact, he pointed out a weakness in the structure of the story I'd never heard before in all my experience with the play, that Hamlet's dilemma over killing Claudius isn't really much of a dilemma.

Big Hutch
I don't see the conflict. I don't see what Hamlet is dealing with, man. Aw, I should kill the king now. I shouldn't kill him now. No, you knew once your father said revenge him, you knew you were going to do this. So what's the hullaballoo about? Do it. I mean, that's the same way. I couldn't see somebody raping my daughter or something and just sitting around. No, no, no, no, no. I got to do you, man. And that's just, [SMACKING SOUND], you done. That's why I think Hamlet's an old minnow too.

Jack Hitt
Are there no reasons to delay taking swift action? Even if you're convinced that you've been wronged? I mean, that's why he stages the play within the play, right? To make sure that Claudius is the bad guy.

Big Hutch
See, that's where we have to go back. Now, if I'm strong enough to believe in ghosts, then I'm strong enough to believe what that ghost tells me. If I'm strong enough to believe you're a ghost, then I'm sure you know what happened to you.

Jack Hitt
Once Hutch got on this riff he kept going. "Denmark's a prison," Hamlet tells Rosencrantz in Act Two. And Hutch says you could do a version of the play that takes this central metaphor literally. All the characters in the play are types he sees in the yard every day. The Claudiuses, who'll do anything for the emblems of power-- money, drugs, high-end tennis shoes, Poloniuses who kiss up to the powerful, Rosencrantz and Guildensterns-- rats, he called them-- spies who run to the administration with information. And in Hutch's version, he solves the play's structural problem, fabricating a true dilemma for Hamlet by giving him good reasons to kill Claudius and not to kill him.

Big Hutch
Just the way it would happen. Claudius killed this guy here because the guy had the biggest dope business in prison or something. Gertrude will be some sissy. You find them everywhere in prison. But the guy they kill will be Hamlet's brother. So now, being in the prison world, he must defend that honor. But he's got a girl talking about, you only got five years. You did your two. Do one more, they're going to parole you. Come on home because I love you and bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. He has another brother in business out there that he can get with to help raise his status. So he has all these things to look forward to on the street. But if he let's that killing go, he's going to have the roughest three years of his entire life. He'll be the piss pot of the institution.

So he has this dilemma. Would he be strong enough to survive it and get out there? Hutch wouldn't. I ain't going to lie.

Agnes Wilcox
OK, places please for the top of Act One.

Jack Hitt
Two months after my visit with Hutch at the first read-through, I was cleared once again into the old classroom. The actors tell me they've been practicing their lines wherever they can, often shouting them from cell to cell.

 

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