Enter Ghost
2010, 49:00
To appear as a ghost is necessarily a reappearance. A ghost comes back to the world of the living for a second round - it leaves the party only to return because it has forgotten its keys. The Ghost in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is already dead before the play begins so it has never been to the party as far as the play is concerned and yet here it is, searching for keys between the couch cushions and convincing Prince Hamlet to avenge the King’s death.
The play begins as Bernardo takes over the night guard and is later joined by Marcellus. They have seen the apparition twice before and in anticipation of spotting it again, Marcellus invited the scholar Horatio along to confirm their sightings and speak to it. The complicating factor is that it has appeared already before its initial entrance onstage (i.e. before the play has begun), making its third appearance as if it is the first. The limbo state of the ghost’s existence is doubled by this slippage of time. It has appeared twice outside the time delineated by the play, in a time when there is no ghost, only an actor waiting offstage behind a curtain. So what kind of time could exist for a ghost that is waiting to appear?
Enter Ghost is a video documenting a dress rehearsal of Shakespeare's Hamlet in which the actors seem incapable of progressing beyond the first scene. Bad acting, technical problems, and eventually mutiny are to blame. The video focuses on the actor playing the Ghost of King Hamlet, who is continually waiting for his cue to appear onstage since each time something goes terribly wrong and the scene must be done again. Enter Ghost is a parody of the ubiquitousness of restaged versions of Hamlet as well as a musing on the state of being in limbo: a Ghost waiting in vain to appear, indefinitely.
"I read this in high school... and I'm reading it again. And I think I understand a lot of stuff." - The Ghost
Featuring: Bryan Bergert, Emma Clazing, Lucian Cosinschi, Christopher Kline, Michaela Lucas, Nicole Ratjen
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