Brooke Adams, Deasan Kevin Terry, Faran Tahir, Jack Cutmore-Scott, and Jacob Fishel in "Hamlet 360."
If Shakespeare believed the imagination could give “to airy nothing/ A local habitation and a name,” what would he make of
this virtual reality Hamlet? Created by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company in collaboration with Google, Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit.joins the growing connections between the oldest and newest immersive art forms. If you attended the 2018 National Conference in St Louis, you might remember the groundbreaking VR work shared in sessions led by Fisher Dachs Associates and Crux.
Co-led by former TCG staffer Dafina McMillan, Crux explores the intersection of black storytelling and immersive technology. I was painfully reminded of the urgent need to lift up and fully support black storytellers after the shocking hate crime committed against actor Jussie Smollett. On Sunday, I attended a performance of Canfield Drive by Kristen Adele Calhoun and Michael Thomas Walker at The Black Rep in Saint Louis. The packed house leaned into the show as it uncovered the circumstances surrounding the 2014 shooting of Mike Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, as well as the systemic racism that causes members of the black community to feel unsafe every day. Whether we make work in the streets, the playhouse, or in digital spaces, we know that as theatre-makers, we have a unique power to heal and to humanize.
In that spirit, I’m pleased to share an update from Virginia Stage Company responding to my call for #shutdownstories. In opening their doors to federal employees who may be struggling financially, Virginia Stage helped heal the divisions of the shutdown and may have made some meaningful new relationships, too. Please share your stories with Gus Schulenburg and we’ll continue to lift them up.
Finally, I’d like to extend a warm congratulations to former TCG intern, Mustafa Kaymak, whose short film Green won the Sundance jury award for US Short Film, Fiction.