Essere o non essere, questo è il problema!

Some “brave” Pantheon Institute students agreed to come with us and see a play performed in Italian on Thursday night.

They had two options to choose from: “La Locandiera”, by the famous 18th century Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni or “Hamlet”, the masterpiece by William Shakespeare.

The students promptly opted for the second possibility: knowing the story already, they said, it would be easier to understand the actors playing in Italian. But Shakespeare’s cues translated into another language aren’t exactly the easiest thing to hear for an English-speaking person. Nevertheless, our students tried very hard to understand what the different characters appearing on stage were telling each other and they managed to get most of the speeches performed by the actors.

Hamlet was put on stage by the “Teatro del Carretto” actors company; they performed a very interesting adaptation of this celebrated bloody melodrama on the theme of revenge.

This experience was also interesting from an architectural point of view: Teatro India, where the play was performed, is indeed located in the citadel of the former Mira Lanza factory, a large industrial site on the banks of the River Tiber in an extremely evocative part of the city. The great gasometer that visually dominates the theatre has come to be a contemporary monument and a symbol of twentieth century Rome associated with this building.