Hamletmachine #2026

Conception, Direction, and Video Design

Hamletmachine #2026

2026 Spring Williams College Theater Dept. Honor Thesis

@ '62 Center for Theater and Dance, Directing Studio

A pre-historic site of relics filled with objects: a Lenin bust, a Samai oil lamp, a faded photo from Vietnamese childhood, a pair of Chinese earrings, a crown, a skull with an axe. A group of four archaeologists enters this ruin of history. Or is it? Is it, perhaps, a family archive of the dead? As excavation turns into performance, they become a trio of theater makers, joined by the ghost of Ophelia, and begin to examine a machine that constantly propels them forward yet traps them inside (r)evolving history.

Part theater, part installation, Hamletmachine #2026 is co-devised by Jane Su, Diliara Sadykova, Saumya Shinde, Coco Zhang, and Hung Ha. It invites you into a history of media, bookended by its past and future, and thus into a history of us as human beings. The devisers dare to create a #2026 version of Heiner Müller’s timeless Hamletmachine in our age—the human age: the age of documentation and representation, of endless recording, of the self watching itself being watched.

Creative Credits:

Conception, Direction & Video: Jane Su

Performers: Diliara Sadykova, Saumya Shinde, Coco Zhang, Hung Ha

Stage Management: Quin Repetto, Patrice Moriarty

Dramaturgy: Lyla Butler, Ziwei Chen, Ruby Wang

Scenic & Props: Leo Yihan Wang

Lighting: Bennett Ptak, Abdiel Perde

Costume: Diliara Sadykova

Music: Coco Zhang

Movement: Ziwei Chen

Sound: Ziwei Chen, Jane Su

Mentorship: Anya Klepikov, Jorge Cousineau

Director's Note:

Many people have come up to me and asked what the show means. How do they access and grapple with the work, amidst so many fragments, references, and the mumblings of one’s personal desperation, failed revenge, and loss in a turbulent time?

I want to offer you many different answers, as Hamletmachine has so much to do with the division and uncertainty of selves—how each of us responds differently to the evolution of time and history. However, I advise you to begin here: the three rocks in front of you, and the many objects next to them, growing out of the dirt and dust, excavated as artifacts, yet resembling a personal family album.

As you spend the next hour in this space, let your mind wander freely through the poetry, cinema, movement, music, and objects we have curated for you. Let yourself be overwhelmed. Most likely, you will remember just one or two moments—much like how we experience the oversaturation of information today. But hold on to the things that remain in the space. While the image in the live cinema changes every 16.7 milliseconds, the objects hold meaning and warmth. When digital footage and archival images fade away, becoming outdated through the constant iteration of technology, let us remember that there are things that do not change. Excavated from earth and dust as they were originally, they remain. And as our generations decay back into earth, they stay.

The rocks stay—as vibrant matter. One of my cast members once told me that the oldest solid materials found on Earth are mineral grains within rocks. As silicon–oxygen compounds, they are so different from humans, yet extremely close to computers.

The monument of the great ruler is the petrification of hope, so claimed Müller. Today, we present to you a plastification of hope: a 3D-printed Lenin head. We are entering an age where we no longer place hope in a single person leading us. We are also entering an age in which we have new rocks: the machine. The computer. You name it.

Looking at the rocks and objects, and seeing how they are activated, is one way to experience this hour of events. One comes to the theater to look at performers, you might argue. Of course, you may take time to circulate around our chorus of Hamlets (the red, green, and blue ones). You may watch this divided Hamlet fragmented across projection screens. You may see them together as a TV Buddha (look it up). You may close your eyes and listen to the fight of three voices and how they come together. You may choose to share the perspective of Ophelia—she who manages time, the world, the new matriarchal order. There are many ways of viewing, and they will likely be very different from the person sitting next to you.

But let me assure you that there is something simple we will all feel together: the unsettled relationship between nature and human cultural evolution, between time and space; the hopes and uncertainties thriving from the solidarity of revolution, from the act of coming together and sharing a space, from the making of theater in the moment.