Hamnet

Dead Centre’s new solo work for an eleven -year-old boy is devoted to Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, who died in 1596, only eleven himself.

A single letter separates Hamnet from the philosophical heights of Hamlet. Unlike the Prince, he cannot ask ‘to be or not to be’. Condemned not to be, he now seeks to understand the world from which he has been wrested.

Hamnet is too young to understand Shakespeare. We are too old to understand Hamnet. Two generations, asking each other what they want to pass on and receive.