“[T]wisted take on the tragedy” – Charles Isherwood, NY Times
“Beautiful” – The New Yorker
“Truly, genuinely, wonderfully theatrical” – NYTheatre.com
“A deconstructed masterstroke” – New York Press
“[A]uthentic Smokey Mountain grace notes” – Variety
Caridad Svich’s Twelve Ophelias, centered on Hamlet's Ophelia, comes back to life, out of the water, to try to overcome her history and forge a new destiny for herself. The world she finds herself in is an Appalachian Elsinore: Denmark by way of Deliverance—where Gertrude runs a brothel, Hamlet and Horatio slum it, and nothing is what it seems. In this squarely American and gritty interpretation of the Hamlet myth, Twelve Ophelias asks how it is possible to break old cycles and start afresh when the past so completely permeates your life.
Woodshed staged the show environmentally in the round as a free event at McCarren Park Pool, formerly one of the city's best-loved concert and performance venues, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The show featured an original score, played live, every night, by alt-rock outfit - Jones Street Station.
Designed and Produced by Woodshed Collective
Written by Caridad Svich
Direction by Teddy Bergman
Original Music Composed and Performed by Jones Street Station
Scenic Design by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn
Costume Design By Jessica Pabst
Choreography by Nicola Bullock
Produced by Stephen Squibb
Performed by Ben Beckley, Kate Benson, Pepper Binkley, Dan Cozzens, Jocelyn Kuritsky, Preston Martin, Grace McLean