The theme of Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan’s (SOTS) 39th season is “What dreams may come” — and for artistic director Kayvon Khoshkam, that means celebrating what both the company has been and what it could be.
“This season is about the potential of the future and asking questions about how and why we do Shakespeare … ahead of our 40th season,” he said. “This season is built around our questions and an investigation with our community and for us to listen, so we can find out what we want to be for the next 40 years.”
This year’s SOTS season will open with the tragedy Hamlet — one of the Bard’s most popular plays — but seeks a new way to tell the story under Khoshkam’s leadership and through the traditional SOTS quirk of unique themes and settings to tell the story.
The story is the same at its core: Hamlet, mourning the death of his father the king of Denmark, goes to great and often terrifying lengths to get revenge on his uncle Claudius, who is now the king after quickly marrying Hamlet’s widowed mother Gertrude.
Khoshkam’s Hamlet is set in the era of the roaring 20s — an era that he said isn’t dissimilar to the modern 20s we’re living through now. Khoshkam quickly found connections that appealed to him about the time period as a setting for the tragedy.
“The 1920s is 100 years ago now, and the 20s of the past and our 20s have a lot of echos: coming out of pandemics, coming out of wars, and a great deal of distraction culture to deal with that trauma,” he said. “I started thinking of The Great Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s representation of that world and I started to feel a parallel between a Hamlet dealing with trauma in a space that is celebrating and not wanting to talk about war and the king that they lost, and the Gatsby world where there’s a constant party and he’s at the centre of it, but he’s not doing well at all.”
It’s a very distinct interpretation of the tragedy from the last time SOTS took on the show in the summer of 2018. The theme of that Hamlet was a darker one meant to be set several decades into the future.
Skye Brandon, who plays Claudius in the 2024 version of the show, played the titular role back in 2018. This year’s cast is larger than last time, and Brandon said the different settings change the characters in subtle ways, noting the different costuming and attitudes that come with a show set in the 1920s.
Both Brandon and Khoshkam lauded the costuming and sets built to give this production a 20s Art Deco flair, but beyond the visual differences Brandon said a new setting leads to new experiences for the audience.
“It’s going to be different from any Hamlet I’ve been a part of or seen,” Brandon said. “This is the first Hamlet on the new (SOTS) site. Even if people have seen Hamlet over the years, they haven’t seen this one.”
In a unique fashion, and in an attempt to immerse the audience in the space and the experience of SOTS, Khoshkam is bringing the performers out into the festival grounds. Prior to the beginning of the show, Khoshkam said the cast will be mingling with the audience as they celebrate the recent wedding of Claudius and Gertrude.
As Brandon puts it, it’s a creative opportunity to engage with an audience that may already be familiar with the traditional Hamlet story.
“Because of the pre-show things we’re doing, it gives us an opportunity to explore and reveal some of these relationships pre-main story,” he said. “It ends up building in some backstory and the audience gets to experience it with us, which I think helps the payoff at the end of the night.”
As Hamlet opens the 39th season at Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan, Khoshkam said he hopes they can excite audiences both new and old with what the company is now — and what they could be next year and beyond.
“I’m hoping the audience feels the dynamic quality of this story, and the adventure and the complications of all the character’s perspectives,” he said. “I’m hoping they feel we were able to activate our whole festival site that makes them feel the whole festival experience well beyond just getting a ticket.”
Hamlet runs select days until August 25th. Tickets for this and all other Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan productions can be found online at shakespearesask.com.
