Goodnight, Sweet Prince…
On May 31st, June 7th, and June 8th 2025, Queen Charlotte’s Villeins presented HAMLET: a Live Reading Experience!
This was no mere staged reading. The Villeins and special guests were costumed in their VILLEIN “livery,” and the performance was staged by segmenting the space into zones, each representing a different location in the play.
Supported by an immersive sound design, lit in the VILLEINS style of practical lamps which adorn an intentionally anachronistic decor, and reading a proprietary cut of the play from bespoke scripts, our band of “Hamleteers” brought fresh vitality to the bard’s most famous words.
For a full list of credits PERUSE THE DIGITAL PLAYBILL HERE.
To read more about the event CHECK OUT THE EVENT PAGE.
Check out this video we made to promote the show, featuring interviews with several of the cast members.
This diagram (and its many layers) was used to plan and execute the staging, lighting- and set-design.
A special shout-out must be made to our House Management team, Eliza Banaszak, Laura Heck, and Fay Cunningham. Eliza oversaw the coordination and execution of the setup and breakdown before and after each performance, which happened quickly and cleanly every show!
Watch it all start to come together in this short, behind the scenes snippet of what it really means to be a VILLEIN – everyone working together, as a troupe, to bring these imagined worlds into being.
‘Twas a tremendous experience and a wonderful way to send off our HAMLET, Jackson Davis, who will be gracing the stages at Carnegie Mellon in the Fall.
Thank you to everyone who helped make this unique, exciting, challenging, and rewarding experience possible.
Lastly, here is one of the first pieces of content produced to market the show, which was paired early on with this song (as suggested by Benedict Burgess, our social media coordinator), and could not be more representative of the tale of Hamlet, in our opinion.
