Hamlet - Benji Lord

In today's society, mental health is something that isn't talked about much, especially with men. This may be because of the stereotypical 'man' is someone who doesn't talk about their feelings as it might be considered 'feminine' or whether it is something that is just genetic. Statistics source: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics/mental-health-statistics-men-and-women - In England, women are more likely than men to have a common mental health problem and are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders. - In 2013, 6,233 suicides were recorded in the UK for people aged 15 and older. Of these, 78% were male and 22% were female. - 10% of mothers and 6% of fathers in the UK have mental health problems at any given time. One in five (19.1%) women had CMD symptoms, compared with one in eight men (12.2%). - Between 2003 and 2013, 18,220 people with mental health problems took their own life in the UK. - Suicide is th...

When performing a classical text such as Shakespeare, articulation is one of the most important things. Getting your mouth around large words can be a challenge so these are some exercises I tried and they proved effective: Tongue-twisters Unique New York New York Unique To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock In a pestilential prison with a life long lock Awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block1 Red Leather, Yellow Leather She says she shall sew a sheet What a to do to die today, at a minute or two to two, a thing distinctly hard to say, but a harder thing to do. For they’ll beat a tattoo at two today a rat a tat at two, and the dragon will come when he hears the drum at a minute or two to two today at a minute or two today. She stood on the balcony, inexplicably mimicking him hiccupping, and amicably welcoming him home.1 A big black bug bit a big black bear and the big black bear bled blue b...

DREAMING AND SLEEP We set our version of the play at 5am, inside Hamlet's mind. I like to think it takes place in a kind of lucid dream.  A Lucid dream is a dream where the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. In some cases, the dreamer is able to have some sort of degree of control over the dream. Early references to the phenomenon are found in ancient Greek writing. For example, the philosopher Aristotle wrote: 'often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream'.   Celia Green concluded that lucid dreams were a category of experience quite distinct from ordinary dreams, and predicted that they would turn out to be associated with rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep ,a unique phase of sleep characterized by rapid movement of the eyes, low muscle tone throughout the body, and the propensity of the sleeper to dream vividly). Green was also the first to link lucid dreams to the phenomenon of ...