Westmont, Lit Moon to Perform Hamlet

The Lit Moon Theatre Company will celebrate the birthday of famed poet William Shakespeare by performing the Bard’s most popular play, “Hamlet,” at Westmont College’s Porter Theatre, Friday, April 28, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, April 29, at 4:30 p.m.

Admission on Friday is free for Westmont students, faculty and staff and $10 for general admission. Tickets on Saturday are $50, which includes an off-campus party following the performance.

Lit Moon’s “Hamlet” has also been one of the company’s most popular productions since 2001. It has played in Gdansk, Poland, in Prague, Czech Republic, and won the Centaur Award for Best Drama at the Montreal Fringe Festival in Montreal, Quebec. It has been invited to a chamber theater festival at the National Theatre Company of China in Beijing next fall.

Westmont and Lit moon have focused a yearlong season of events on contemporary, international approaches to Shakespeare’s plays. This “Year in the Life” series features productions, lectures, film screenings and workshops. It will culminate with the 2006 Lit Moon World Theater Festival which runs from October 12-22 and will be entirely devoted to international Shakespeare. The festival will be staged at a variety of Santa Barbara venues, including the Lobero and Center Stage Theatres, as well as Westmont’s Porter Theatre. The festival will open with “Hamlet” at the Lobero on Oct. 12.

John Blondell, Westmont theater arts professor, is the founding artistic director of Lit Moon and director of the Lit Moon World Theater Festival. He received his doctorate from UC Santa Barbara and has won several awards including five Independent Theater Awards and a 1994 Robby Award for Best Director of a Musical for the original musical “Joan of Arc.”

The Lit Moon’s production of “Hamlet” was created with Prague-based scenographer Milon Kalis, whose idea it was to hang a large sheet of paper across the length of the stage.

“It starts from just a clean sheet of paper that says ‘Hamlet’ on it,” explains Blondell. “It then becomes kind of a character in the play.”
Images are projected onto the paper, actors write key words on it, windows and doors are cut into it. In the end, the paper gets hacked down in a dramatic dueling scene.

For more information please call Karna Humbert at (805) 565-6040.