Parking Shakespeare brings 'Hamlet' to Parc de l’Estació del Nord

“Summer doesn't start until Parking Shakespeare premieres its play in the Til·lers park”. This thought, expressed by the company's actress Ariadna Matas, is a shared sentiment among the audience. With this year's production, the theatre company will perform an open-air play in the Parc de l’Estació del Nord for the seventeenth consecutive year. This summer it's the turn of Hamlet and the rotten things, directed and adapted by Roger Torns, a free adaptation of the most famous work by the Bard of Avon, which will begin this Thursday the 9th at 7 p.m. and can be seen from Thursdays to Mondays until August 3rd.Like a mystical apparition of Hamlet's father, Parking Shakespeare returns after achieving last year with Cymbeline over 5,000 people in attendance throughout the summerCymbeline over 5,000 people in attendance throughout the summer. From one of the playwright's lesser-known works to one of the most acclaimed tragedies of all time, Hamlet. Although the park is under construction, the company will be able to perform the play normally in a circular space perfect for stage performance. Roger Torns, director of the production, explains how the process of adapting one of William Shakespeare's darkest works for a very relaxed environment has been. "The park allows for lightness, because sometimes we forget that people used to come and go from the theatre whenever they wanted," Torns recalls. The actor and director also emphasized that performing it in an open space "removes the burden of having to do a Shakespeare, with all that entails".Bringing Shakespeare to the parks

For seventeen years, the company has chosen a play by the English playwright to take to the streets and bring it closer to the people. Its creator, actor Pep Garcia-Pascual, explains that he was inspired by the way he observed in Dublin of staging Shakespeare's plays in public parks. This modus operandi has led them to perform theatre abroad, giving a performance last year at a theatre festival in Romania. Even Pascual brought Catalan theatre by reciting some verses at the Globe Theatre, the reconstruction of William Shakespeare's original theatre in London. The company also symbolizes an opportunity for young Catalan talent who often do not have many spaces to make their voice heard. For this reason, they decided to hold an open casting where more than 200 people presented themselves to embody the characters.The hidden part of Hamlet

With all the interpretations it has given rise to and all the existential moments that Hamlet contains, we also find a part of commedia dell'arte. As in all of Shakespeare's works, comedy and tragedy merge into a single compound to make the audience's emotions swing like a roller coaster and move, quickly, from mockery to tears. Roger Torns claims this hidden component of Hamlet. “It doesn't stop having its comical part, our version also has a bit of a spy play,” emphasizes the actor. “The rotten things” that give the performance its title refers, according to Torns, to “the structure against which Hamlet has to fight: the imposed male hegemony, the patriarchy where we all have to live in a state of constant surveillance”.The narrative thread of the play will be carried by the character of Horatius, played by Ariadna Matas, who follows the request made by the Prince of Denmark at the end of the original play to explain his story, shaping it into the tragedy that everyone knows. Parking Shakespeare returns for another year and, as Roger Torns expresses, "hopes to continue thrilling the audience like other summers." The performance will last one hour and twenty-five minutes.