Shakespeare and Possibility: Hamlet 50/50

In August 2023, the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival premiered Hamlet 50/50, a new adaptation of Hamlet which seeks to advance gender equity in the workplace of Shakespeare practitioners. The longest and most famous of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet, has only two female characters, who are responsible for only 8.5% of its 4,000+ lines. Because of this, the play often poses a challenge to theatre companies wanting to produce this famous tragedy while also upholding a gender equitable workplace environment. Hamlet 50/50 provides a bold new solution by reallocating lines (i.e 50% of lines spoken by female characters and 50% by male) and rebalancing the play’s embedded power dynamics while remaining faithful to the text, its author, and its world. 

This Shakespeare and Possibility offering features Peter Holland, McMeel Family Chair of Shakespeare Studies, and Vanessa Morosco, co-adaptor and director of Hamlet 50/50 in a conversation moderated by Jennifer Birkett, Shakespeare at Notre Dame’s postdoctoral research fellow and includes an audience Q&A. Please enjoy this opportunity to learn more about the possibility of gender equitable Shakespeare performance.