Stillness in Hamlet

My paper 'Stillness in Hamlet'- will focus on how Romanian productions of Hamlet after the 1989-Revolution negotiated their relation with history, that is to say, Hamlet's 16th century heritage, four centuries of international reception of Hamlet since, and more importantly, the relatively recent Romanian past which had turned Hamlet into 'a Romanian history play'. Looking at post-1989 Romanian productions of Hamlet, I begin by exploring how they strive to bring the 'still' text (which always comes with a 'history') to life in performance, and on the other hand, analysing the productions' methods of 'capturing' Hamlet (as a present story) in spite of the ephemeral quality of performance and before it becomes 'history'. For the purpose of this paper I will approach several Romanian productions of the play after 1989 with a view to their varying use of stillness: from slow-motion and immobility, to tableaux, split-screen, frozen screen, and computer projections.