This week, JustArts chatted with Samantha LeVangie '15, who directed Hold Thy Peace's adapted production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet this past weekend.

JA: I heard that some of the script was cut in the interest of time. Could you tell us about how you chose what to take out and what to keep in?

SL: Hamlet originally was about a six-hour production, so the script is very long. The first big cut I made, which a lot of productions of Hamlet make, is the character of Fortinbras. There's basically an underlying military plotline in the play, which, of course is essential to the original text. It's the easiest cut to make if you're not focusing on the military aspect of the production.

There were a few scenes here and there that I felt that were unnecessary or that I felt didn't get to the point of the show, especially for modern audiences, so I focused a lot on keeping the text that really got to the point-a lot of the beautiful language is nice to listen to. But I kept a coherent plotline without making things abrupt, which is important.

JA: Can you tell us about your decision to portray Horatio as a ghost, and did you like how this turned out?

SL: I like how it turned out! With Hamlet, it's such a popular production, it's such a popular play, it's highly quoted. Everyone knows Hamlet. So while it's my favorite play, I also struggled when I thought about directing it. I struggled with what I would do, because I didn't want to do stock Shakespeare, a production that's been done thousands and thousands of times. And so I was thinking about the supernatural and how that plays a role in the production. And in the original text, there's only two or three scenes that ghosts play a part in ... and then there's Horatio, who is Hamlet's best friend and confidante and the voice of reason in the play.

He also only ever really talks to Hamlet-there are a few exceptions, but they were easily tweaked with-so I decided I wanted to try it out. I read through the script, I made sure to see that it worked, and it did. I liked this because it adds a layer of insecurity to Hamlet's character, because he is now the only real living, breathing person in the play who sees the ghosts (later in the production, I also had Ophelia see it, but she was going mad). I kind of implied that the more mad you were, the closer you were to the ghostly realm. Or maybe they were just hallucinating, that's up to the audience.

JA: It seems like the production was modernized with respect to costumes. How did choices like these contribute to this production as an adaptation of the original play?

SL: One of the things about Shakespeare is that it can be extremely intimidating to a modern audience-especially to a college audience. You come in to Brandeis and, I feel like, people are really polarized in their opinion of Shakespeare. ... A lot of people have really strong opinions. So one of the things that I wanted to do to kind of close the barrier that a lot of people have with Shakespeare is to make it more contemporary, more relatable. That's one less thing you have to worry about. ... Everyone wore clothes, generally, that reflected [their status] in the play. So the Queen and the King usually wore business attire, suits, more proper clothing. Hamlet is a stand-out because he didn't really care about presenting himself properly to the court, he just wanted to stick it to his mother and his uncle, so he wore jeans the first few scenes. Whenever they were costumed in any way, it was strictly chosen by what his mood was, what he wanted to present to other characters. I didn't want it to be time-period specific, just out-of-time contemporary.

JA: Could you tell us a bit about your experience directing? What sort of challenges did you run into?

SL: This was my first time directing. One of the biggest challenges was determining how much to reveal in the process of directing. I came up with the whole concept, I came into my first rehearsal completely ready for anyone's questions. I had everyone's back story-of course, I kept in mind that these are actors, they're going to create their own characters and their own image. But especially for all the changes I had made in the play, I was prepared for the back story. I think one of the reasons I struggled-the first rehearsal or two- was that I revealed too much of the intricacies with characters before they knew their characters well enough to know what I was talking about.

-Rachel Hughes and Emily Wishingrad