Re-Contextualizing Stage Politics: Interrogating Shakespeare’s Hamlet In Uruguay

Abstract

For the spectator initiated in the political aspect of the Shakespearean theatre, Carlos Manuel Varela’s Interrogatorio en Elsinore proposes “a kind of extended palimpsest” of Hamlet that connects on stage a troubled, fictional Elsinore to the traumatic reality of Uruguay during the military junta. For the reader fascinated by comparative literary studies and implicated in the theatre world, Interrogatorio en Elsinore resonates with the Bulgarian playwright Nedjalko Iordanov’s the Murder of Gonzago by drawing from parallel extreme ideologies of neo-fascist and communist dictatorships and their institutionalized regime of terror. Both plays showcase the potential of the performance in Hamlet to underpin the role of the artist in the political landscape. Applied to Interrogatorio en Elsinore, such reflections lead the initiated spectator to conclude that Varela’s play proposes a Hamlet who connects on stage a troubled, fictional Elsinore to the traumatic reality of Uruguay.