The performance does not reconstruct Shakespeare’s plot. Instead, it pulls Hamlet out of the cold storage of a morgue to ask: can this still be performed? For centuries, hundreds, thousands and millions of bodies have carried the iconic figure of Hamlet. Each new incarnation leaves its mark, but also further dilutes the original. Very Very Hamlet is a gothic-trash time capsule in which Hamlet’s body undergoes a performative autopsy.

In the classic Hamlet, bodies pile up quickly. Death is constantly anticipated, immersed in metaphysics. While contemplating the meaning of existence, Hamlet expands it to cosmic proportions, and by the end of the play bodies fall like flies, defenceless against poison and the sword.

The speed at which the characters die is almost funny. Laughter and death are separated by only a few letters…

These acts are suspiciously alike: both open mouths, stop breath and throw the body out of balance. One is an explosion of life, the other its end, yet from the outside they can look almost identical. In both cases, the human body becomes unserious – whether for a moment or forever.

On stage, death can happen repeatedly and without consequence. That is why Very Very Hamlet becomes a funeral firecracker: a compulsive remix of bodies and identities, fuelled by absurd humour and grotesque form. Pathos collides with comedy, while contemporary language feeds parasitically on Shakespearean phrasing.

Knapik and Kowańska construct the stage as a palimpsest of representations. In this performance, theatre becomes a space for reproducing gestures and complexes, voices and sounds. The actors are both the pawns and the chessboard itself. They try on roles, quote them, transform them and abandon them.