Paper short abstract:

How did the state of uncertainty caused by the pandemic affect renditions of Shakespeare’s tragedy, a play which was written between outbreaks of the bubonic plague? This paper considers the ways in which Miyagi’s Hamlet was shaped by and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

How could a contemporary Japanese production of Hamlet affirm its raison d'être in the context of the pandemic when theatre going was seen as an ‘unessential’ activity and many art events were cancelled, curtailed or forced to find other means of representation? How did the state of uncertainty caused by the pandemic affect renditions of Shakespeare’s tragedy, a play which was written between outbreaks of the bubonic plague? These questions were central to Satoshi Miyagi’s 2021 production of Hamlet. This paper considers the ways in which Miyagi’s Hamlet was shaped by and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Satoshi Miyagi first staged Hamlet in 1990 as the debut production of his Ku Na’uka theatre company. The production experimented with the division of characters into speakers and movers which became a dominant feature in Ku Na’uka’s stage history. Miyagi chose to stage Hamlet again for his first Shakespearean production as director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre (SPAC) in 2008. He revived the play at SPAC in 2015 and from January to March 2021, drawing on these latter two versions, he re-worked the production at SPAC in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.