I believe the first play I ever saw was during my freshman year at Bates College 25 years ago. An alternative version of Hamlet, about the only things I remember was that I really enjoyed it, and that they drove a motorcycle on stage. Last night I watched another alternative version of Hamlet by the Krétakör troupe at the Mu Színház . The play was translated into Hungarian by Ádám Nádasdy and incorporated texts by William Blake, Georg Büchner, Eminem, Allen Ginsberg, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Attila József, János Pilinszky and Biblical quotations from the Book of the Judges. Hamlet featured a very talented cast of three: Gyabronka József, Nagy Zsolt, Rába Roland. At the best of times, I have difficulty reading or watching a Shakespeare play in the original, and it was a challenge to grasp the often complex language in Hungarian. Never-the-less, it was a very well-acted and enjoyable performance.

What stood out was the way in which the actors engaged and involved the audience. As with the original performances, the stage was a theater-in-the-round. The three actors often sat among the audience, and at several points asked the crowd to volunteer to read selections. I was very nervous that they would ask me, and was fully prepared, regardless of embarrassment, to ask in English for the original to read if I was "volunteered!"

Instead of looking over our heads at some point in the back of the theater, the cast looked you directly in the eye, or addressed their lines to you. No one really knew if they were expected to answer. Some did, some didn't, some just nodded in acknowledgement. Near the end, there was a bloodbath of killing, When Nagy Zsolt pretended to shoot me with a shotgun I did not know if I should play dead or not. Then he shot me again, then he tried two shotguns at once. He finally just came and slit my throat and I knew then, to his relief, that I was actually supposed to react. One of the empty seats reserved for the performers was right next to me, and I noticed that even though they were running around under hot lights for 2 hours, they all semelled fresh as daisies. I wonder what kind of soup they use? Aye, there's the rub (a-dub-dub).