For Immediate Release:

Coin & Ghost Presents The World Premiere of
Bad Hamlet
An Irreverent, Interactive, Inventive Bootleg
Directed by Rob Adler
At New American Theatre
July 25 – August 24, 2019

LOS ANGELES, CA – July 16, 2019 – Coin & Ghost, LA’s theatrical home for remixed mythologies, will present its latest World premiere, Bad Hamlet, at the end of July, as the inaugural production of its second season. The emerging theatre company’s new work—devised by the ensemble and directed by Rob Adler—is an irreverent, interactive, and inventive play that places Shakespeare’s masterpiece directly up against the many interpretations of it, whether accurate, misremembered, or re-invented entirely. Bad Hamlet will run from Thursday, July 25, through Saturday, August 24, 2019, at New American Theatre in Hollywood. The first show will be the designated preview performance, with opening night taking place on Friday, July 26th. For more information and tickets please visit https://coinandghost.org/badham.

Based on the legend of “the bad quarto”—the unbelievable-but-true story of how the first published version of Hamlet was stolen and recreated from memory by one of Shakespeare’s original actors—Bad Hamlet will be a unique, unpredictable, and extraordinary theatrical event that explores the intersection of Shakespeare, memory, modern technology and Los Angeles.

Zachary Reeve Davidson by Elisa Rosin. Photo Courtesy by Coin & Ghost.

 
Director Rob Adler explains the modern technology component, “During each performance, the actors—equipped with cameras—will venture out of the theater and engage with the community immediately outside, who naturally have varying degrees of ‘Hamlet’ knowledge. These interactions will be live-streamed back into the theatre for our audience. However these encounters go—whatever version, portion, or reference to Hamlet is remembered—will impact, shape, and ultimately become the Hamlet that happens live onstage. Each performance of this ever-shifting, crowdsourced Hamlet will be a unique, unpredictable, and we hope, extraordinary theatrical event.”
 
WHEN • WHERE • HOW MUCH:
Coin & Ghost (C&G) will mount fifteen Bad Hamlet performances over the five-week run, every Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm. Tickets cost $25 for general admission and, as always, C&G will offer a healthy mix of Pay-What-You-Can (PWYC) tickets for certain shows. PWYC Nights will include the Preview (7/25) as well as EVERY TICKET during the second and third weekends (8/1-8/10)! New American Theatre is located at 1312 N. Wilton Pl., Los Angeles, CA 90028. Suggested age limit is 16-years or older due to adult themes and conversations. Mobile phone use will be encouraged for this production!

In addition to Adler, the Bad Hamlet production team includes Hannah Athena Lawton (Costumes), Joey Guthman (Lighting Design) and Lyndsi Zapata (choreography). The ambitious team is made complete with Coin & Ghost’s inner circle that includes its Artistic Director Zachary Reeve Davidson (Producer), Managing Director Marguerite French (Producer), Associate Artistic Director/Music Director Elisa Rosin (Producer), Associate Artistic Director Kendall Johnson (Producer), Production Manager Niki Armato (Assistant Director/Stage Manager) and Director of Community Engagement Joseph Baca (Producer). The ensemble includes Casey Dunn, Julián Juaquín, Akshaya Pattanayak, Chris Schultz, Hannah Trujillo, and Lauren Vitz, as well as some faces familiar to C&G audiences, such as Davidson, French, and Rosin.

SEASON TWO: MYTH-REMEMBERED = THREE COIN & GHOST ORIGINALS (aka World Premieres):
“Though we like to think of memory as straightforward and objective, it’s actually a very fluid process,” says Coin & Ghost Artistic Director Zachary Reeve Davidson. “Each time we access a memory, we’re likely to change it, to add or omit certain details as we attempt to recall and/or recreate it. Each of the three, incredible projects we’ve chosen for Season Two are well-worn stories, so vivid, so etched into our collective memory…that they can’t possibly be true. This season—constructed entirely of Coin & Ghost Originals—is all about exploring the space between our memory of events and the objective reality of them.”

Bad Hamlet will be followed by the World premiere of Mama, Mama, Can’t You See, a new play by Cecilia Fairchild and Marine Veteran, Stan Mayer. Rooted in visceral physicality, raw American poetry, and Mayer’s own experience in the Iraq War, Mama, Mama, Can’t You See is simultaneously a modern war story and a spirit dance on the outside edge of death, and will be directed by C&G Artistic Director Zachary Reeve Davidson.

Coin & Ghost will close out its MYTH-REMEMBERED season on an absurdist aesthetic adventure: Breakfast in Moscow. Conceived and directed by Alex Demers, this Coin & Ghost original is a bold, stylized production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, reimagined as a rock-opera using music from the 1979 Supertramp album, Breakfast in America.

Davidson concluded, “In mis-remembering things, we get to reinvent them. We invite you to join us on this miraculous, impossible, journey around the world, from Denmark to Iraq to Moscow, reinventing everything as we go in a way that is inherently true to Los Angeles.”

Remixed mythologies. Dangerously imaginative. Learn more at coinandghost.org or on social media @coinandghost.

Left-to-Right: Julián Juaquín & Zachary Reeve Davidson.
Photo credit: Elisa Rosin; Courtesy Coin & Ghost.

ABOUT:

Rob Adler –
Rob Adler is a celebrity performance coach who marries improvisation skills with scripted scenes to enhance spontaneity in well crafted performances. He is also an actor, director, filmmaker, teacher, founder of the AdlerImprov Studio in Hollywood (www.adlerimprov.com) and writes a regular column offering expert advice to actors for Backstage (https://goo.gl/RSWRwZ). His recent short film You Too? explores the ways in which language perpetuates sexual assault and was an official selection at the Pasadena International Film Festival and the Underexposed Film Festival. Adler is a faculty member at Chicago’s Theatre School at DePaul University and leads masterclasses all over the world.

New American Theatre –
​New American Theatre (NAT) is a creative, artist-helmed theatre company. NAT seeks to inspire, educate and nurture artists and our community towards a thoughtful and humane world view through the art of story-telling. We help young theatre artists find their voices, cultivate social consciousness and prepare for a lasting career. We support new and established playwrights and incubate new plays. We seek to make a lasting, life-long impression on our community – inspiring the audience to continue provocative conversations long after the curtain closes | https://www.newamericantheatre.com.

Coin & Ghost –
Coin & Ghost is a Los Angeles-based theatre company known for its imaginative remixing of known mythologies. The company defines mythology as “any set of stories that simultaneously SHAPES and IS SHAPED BY a culture.” So Traditional Greek and Roman myths count, sure, as do any culture’s creation myths. But when viewed through this lens, Shakespeare has a clear mythology to it, as do comic books, Tennessee Williams, and other folklore. C&G use these stories as a base, a structure, even as a playground — but not as a rulebook. Each project begins on the well-worn road of a known mythology, and then branches off on its own unique, wild path. For C&G’s mission and the Etymology of its name, please visit https://coinandghost.org/about-us.

Inclusive Ticket Pricing Policy –
Ticket price should never be the reason hopeful attendees can’t see a show that they are excited about. That’s why C&G believes in offering Pay-What-You-Can (PWYC) seats or nights for each of its productions. If theatre goers give what they can, it allows C&G to offer these tickets to underserved but well-deserving members of our community.

LINKS:

• Bad Hamlet info & tickets – https://coinandghost.org/badham
• Bad Hamlet FB Event Page – https://www.facebook.com/events/827325200986517 
• Coin & Ghost – https://coinandghost.org
• C&G Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/coinandghost
• C&G Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/coinandghost
• C&G Twitter – https://twitter.com/CoinAndGhost
• Photos – bit.ly/coinghost_media

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For more information, photos, to schedule an interview or request press passes, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.