by Joshua Lee and Fan Yang

In December 2025, the School of English successfully organized a live production of Hamlet​​ by our students (MAES, MACC & MFA). Lasting 3 days and supported by a crew comprising 45 actors and 42 designers, the production was highly successful and well attended. On 22nd January 2026, we were honoured to attend a dialogue between director  Dr. Murray and stage manager Ms. Linda Wu, in which they talked about their experiences leading Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Linda: Thank you for agreeing to do this. I feel that the actors can really get your energy.

Dr. Murray: That’s part of the job—to infuse them with the right materials that they need to succeed. It’s about understanding the play and knowing how you need to move actors around on the stage. Angles are absolutely key: where people are looking, where they can see each other, how they move, and how long it takes to move. Having experience with actors on stage is really important. You also have to give them the idea that everything is happening for the first time, right in that moment, with the amount of energy a person would have if they’d never experienced that before. The shock, the excitement, the grief, the feeling of love—all of that has to be present every time. That heightened energy is what we want to see in the theatre. That’s why we’re there: to experience life through the actors in that piece of work.

Linda: I also feel that the actors are really trying. At first, maybe they just listen to advice, but as they have more rehearsals, they start thinking from their own side.

Dr. Murray: Yes, absolutely, and I love seeing that. That’s where multicasting works well, because you see slightly different versions of the lead roles. One Hamlet might be more gentle, another angrier. It’s not just the lines; it’s each person’s interpretation of the character. Some people might find that distracting, but in an educational setting, it’s not all about the final product. It’s about what students go through while creating the piece, and what we learn by watching it—how we understand the character differently through different portrayals.

Linda: But could different people performing the same character be too distracting for the audience?

Dr. Murray: One way to work on that is to have all the actors who are playing the same role talk together and make sure their understanding of the role is similar. Casting also matters. I looked for people with similar vocal quality, size, and certain gestures or elegance. I also considered what roles the actors wanted to play, because when they get the role they want, they’re more motivated. And again, in an educational context, we’re not trying to create a professional product to sell tickets. We’re trying to give students the best educational experience of Shakespeare and theatre. Multicasting fits their busy schedules and gives them opportunities both on stage and backstage—working with props, furniture, costumes, backdrops, and music. Those experiences were amazing for them.

Linda: What do you think is most important for actors to know?

Dr. Murray: Every actor must know exactly what they’re saying. That’s fundamental. They need to know what’s just been said to them and what comes next, so they understand the intention of the scene. Then they ask, “What do I want? What am I trying to achieve?” Hamlet, for example, is often trying to find the truth. Other characters might be trying to hide something or defend themselves. When actors really own the words, they feel natural, and then they gain freedom—with movement, gesture, pitch, timing, and pace. Acting is a lot like singing. It’s about playing with the line, not just saying it.

Linda: The cast are not necessarily students from the course. Could you share more about the consideration of selecting the cast and the production crew?

Dr. Murray: First, it’s not necessary to have been on the ‘Global Shakespeare’ course; we had fantastic performances and design contributions for people who weren’t in ‘Global Shakespeare’. It probably helped a little bit from the standpoint of having additional tools to analyze the text, because they had a dozen or so classes that the other students didn’t have. But, the students not in Global Shakespeare took it upon themselves to do extra research and understand the language they were working with. So, my priority was giving students the opportunity to play who they wanted to play. So I was able to put together a collection of roles, giving students more opportunities on stage.The same was true for design decisions: almost all students were able to work in a design area they were interested in, such as costumes, props, or stage management. But when they moved to a different area, they met new friends and learned new skills. Working on the crew is well-aligned with the career goals of students, not only from MAES but particularly those from MACC. Their work was visual, technical, and collaborative, because this is life in the backstage. It was very oriented towards practical considerations, so students worked in teams. They were able to manage these design elements largely on their own, with a bit of help from a wonderful team of RAs like yourself in stage management. For lighting, we brought in a professional, because we had specific requirements in the Black Box, which had not been used for a production by the School of English in quite some time. So, we brought in professional expertise and were able to render nice lighting effects on stage.

Linda: Can you share with us which plays you have revisited as a director? What did you learn from directing those plays again?

Dr. Murray: There are several plays that I have taken scenes from numerous times. I’ve done a series of scenes put together as a production that works really well with students, and it shapes an interesting evening giving a snippet of different bits of Shakespeare throughout his writing career. So in that context, I’ve done Hamlet numerous times. Each time you visit a play, you’re looking at it in a different time period, so different lines jump out at you. Also, you’re in a different place as a director or an actor. So, Hamlet feels different than it did the last time, because I noticed more about bereavement and parent-child relationships than I might have five to ten years ago. You also have different actors who bring something new. It’s quite nice to have all these women play Hamlet. I have done that before, but this time most of the actors playing Hamlet were women. So it was quite nice to see what they brought to the role. Same for Claudius. There were more women playing Claudius, so to see what they brought to that very destructive character was really intriguing.

Linda: What would you say to current students looking to adapt and perform Shakespeare’s plays?

Dr. Murray: Shakespeare belongs to all of us, so it is neither just for English actors, nor must it be set in the UK or the regional areas that Shakespeare knew. Those plays are for all of us to use, to alter the setting, and to even make judicious cuts and bring the plays to life with our interpretations. It’s fine to change a few lines, place them in another language, or even modernize the phrasing so that it’s better understood. If we don’t play with the language, the setting, and the look and feel of the production, then Shakespeare might fade a bit, and people will lose interest over the decades to come. But by bringing into different contexts, people can see the core of the language, the psychological reality, the interesting characters, the political dynamics, the interpersonal conflicts, and so people can relate to those because they’re not distracted by something they don’t understand. If they can see someone that they can relate to, then they will say, “Ah, that is very much like what I or my friends or my family or my country have experienced”.

In the coming years, the School of English will continue to host productions of Shakespeare and provide platforms for incoming students to flex their creative muscles. We support this bold endeavour and look forward to future performances, as actors, backstage hands, and as the audience!