In the Dead Vast Middle of the Night: I Am Become Hamlet

Last night I dreamed I was called in at the last minute to cover two nights of a run of Hamlet. As Hamlet. People seemed quite comfortable with this decision. And so did I until I showed up for call. Suddenly I was sporting a beard, sideburns, and heavy eyebrows. Next I was in a costume that was acres too large. I looked like I was playing dress-up in my dad's suit. Kind of fits, eh? The only thing that fit were my boots - my own trusty black boots that I wear every day during the winter.

No one seemed too eager to get started. The audience can wait they all said. Let's eat. There's a restaurant next door. We could walk right into the kitchen and later during the show, we made entrances from the side door of the restaurant. I would walk through all melancholy danish-like and get hit smack in the face with the delicious odors of roasted meats, sweet breads, and boiling stews. Which improved my disposition mightily.

The set was a long alleyway center stage that split off into a series of horse stalls going stages left and right. It was dark except once in awhile I'd get hit by a pinpoint spot or a flood of strips rising up from the floor aiming across me and then sweeping out towards the audience. Gertrude and Claudius were always onstage lounging on a couch in the center stage left stall. We talked without looking at each other. I'd start a line in the back of the house and walk forward declaiming it, then the response would come from somewhere around the stage wherever the actor I spoke to was positioned.

Lines: I started to panic. My mind was trying to recall Hamlet's lines from Act 1, scene 2 and then I'd get fearful and panicky and well you know the actor's nightmare thing. I came up with strategies for getting through - like scribbling key phrases on the set or stashing my script somewhere. Except, I really did know the lines once I was onstage, it was the reality of sleeping and not being able to remember that caused the panic. There were many pauses and the sense that we didn't sync up with each other. I was always out of time. No one complained. We were discovering something new together and people were patting me on the back - all very encouraging.

I was always aware that my suit didn't fit. That I was wearing a ridiculous beard. That my boots fit and felt comfortable. I was forever futzing with my left shirt cuff. It became a signature gesture. I always knew what I was doing was a performance and I performed without trying to become immersed, lost in Hamlet. I was always aware that we were connected to a restaurant and that there was another world of activity going on through that door downstage right. It was always dark but I could see the audience when I wanted. I knew what was going on outside of the theater - buses and cars and people searching for pianos. Later I left the performance and started searching the neighborhood for a place to hide. I had my 20 month old son with me and we had to be careful. We had to get home before dark when the vampires and the anti-terrorist units came out.

Last year I dreamed of Bill Murray and Karl Rove just before the New Year. This year it's Hamlet meets I Am Legend. I wonder if this dream has anything to do with my decision to pretend I'm Susan Sontag? Memory be green and the new year not yet minted.

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.1