Alexander Flanagan Wright: Questions, questions and more questions about Hamlet
ALEXANDER Flanagan Wright has an idea for a show. Not Hamlet exactly, but a version that asks all the big questions in Hamlet, not only To Be Or Not To Be, at York International Shakespeare Festival tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday.
“I’ve got an idea for a version of Hamlet,” says Alex, storyteller, playwright, dream-weaver of words, director and leading light of The Flanagan Collective, one half of Wright & Grainger and co-founder of Theatre at The Mill, Stillington, near York.
“It’s a gathering, a conversation and a collective reading. We’ll have some tea and some biscuits (I’ll provide those), we’ll read some of Shakespeare’s play together, and we’ll have a good chat.”
There’s more than that, of course, he promises. “It’s deeper than that. It’s about us being somewhere together, here and now; it’s about us grappling with our existential place in the world; it’s about us seeing how words give rise to ideas and definitions about ourselves; it’s about feeling isolated when we’re in the middle of many people. It’s about us all doing something together, whilst bits of the world are tearing us apart.
“And, like I’ve already said, it’s about having a cup of tea. It’s a new show, a new gathering, a new idea. And I’d like to invite you to come and be a part of it.”
To be or not to be at Rise@Bluebird Bakery, Acomb, York, tonight at 8.30pm, or York St John University Creative Centre Auditorium, tomorrow at 10am, or Micklegate Social, Micklegate, York, on Wednesday, 7.30pm, you decide. To book, head to yorkshakes.co.uk. Running time: up to 90 minutes.
Full interview will run from tomorrow.