Diptyque Summer Break / Après Hamlet

Natacha Koutchoumov, the co-director of the Comédie de Genève, directs a diptych based on William Shakespeare. The shows can be seen together or separately. Après Hamlet combines Shakespearian adventures with the mysteries of the soul of an artist, while making a detour into the world of fantasy cinema. Final scene of Hamlet. Cheers and applause. The troupe is invited to answer questions from the audience during a stage-edge conversation. The conversation turns sour, though, accounts are settled, secrets come to light and ghosts from everyone’s past resurface. Some scenes from the play will take on a whole new meaning! Summer Break is freely adapted from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We follow four young people auditioning for the role of the lovers in the play. Between glass panels, mirrors and false pretences, which expose predatory gazes, the audition becomes a nightmarish laboratory, in a universe based on horror films and the Z series. This subtle thriller probes the psyche of artists and offers an ethnological and poetic analysis in which the comedy makes us wince.