From the Herald Sun on November 25, 2008:

Andre Tchaikowsky, a concert pianist and composer, never achieved his dream of becoming an actor, so he bequeathed his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

It has sat in a box in the props department, untouched, for 25 years. Now, it has made its stage debut at a Hamlet production in Shakespeare’s former town of Stratford-upon-Avon, starring TV’s Doctor Who David Tennant.

“It was sort of a shock tactic, though of course to some extent that wears off and it’s just Andre in his box,” production director Greg Doran said.

The pianist, who died at 46 of cancer, left the rest of his body to science.

His skull was almost set to star as that of “poor Yorick” in an earlier production in 1989, but after a month of rehearsals the lead actor declared he was uncomfortable handling “real human remains”.

I thought of the above story, amongst several other things, because of this dream I had a while back. The same dream that I seemed to have in a slightly updated from a few nights ago. In both of these dreams, each delerious on magical oneiric energy, I was an actor who had been cast in a high school production of Hamlet. I wasn’t younger or back in high school in this dream. I was me, just as I am now, almost ten years removed from the hustle and the bustle of the high school game. I had been cast as the Prince of Denmark in a high school play in which all of the other cast members were high school students. It was wild, but naturally a little weird as well.

At whatever point in the dream that was “now,” it was a few hours before the curtain rose and there was a rally going on at school, one of those “school spirit” boosters in the auditorium (that all of us cool kids would skip), so the masses were at that, and the more theatre-ish crowd (and you remember how weird all the drama kids were at your high school)(no offense if you were a drama kid back in high school, but let’s no bullshit, you know what I’m talking about better than anyone)(and what I’m talking about is at my high school[s], the drama kids were the ones prone to orgies, boring orgies in which they spoke lines from Hamlet and screamed and argued over which era of the Beatles’ albums their friendship was currently at, but that’s a story for another time, obviously) were all hanging out around the back stage area and it’s peripherals. Some of the kids were assembled in neat little cluters, either talking about which set of tights made their package look nicer or worried about a zit here and there or whether or not whatshername from their Science class would go with them to the prom, or at least give them a handjob in exchange for weed. A classy bunch, to be sure.

Somewhere at this point in the dream, as I was just wandering around and taking note of things as I am wont to do, I had (of course) forgotten all of my lines. For this play that we had rehearsing for several weeks now. The dream “me” had forgotten the lines, I mean. And there I was, about to go into this performance, struggling the to think up all of the lines from Hamlet that I could remember, that actual “me” could remember, that is (which, to be fair, is probably a good deal more than your average person remembers).

And so there I am, sitting there in this dream, trying to think of how I’m going to play all of these scenes that were awaiting me, which choices I wanted to make in the performance (and Hamlet is a role with nothing but choices attached), how big I wanted to take certain parts of it, and trying to think about which moments needed to be quieter, more restrained. Also, there was the question of how overwhelmingly masculine or how little boy-ish the main character to be, rewinding my memory back to Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet and Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, excellent examples of both of those almost in the extreme. Even the Ethan Hawke Hamlet made it’s way through my grey matter, a film that had some decent parts, both as a film by itself and as a retelling of a classic (but all of the stuff in the film that I liked was with my favorite character in this story and not with the title character).

I was even straining to remember Kurosawa’s version of Hamlet, The Bad Sleep Well, and Olivier’s Hamlet (or even The Lion King), both I saw both of them so long ago that it was harder to recall anything. But all of it was in a jumble as I paced back and forth, furiously attempting to remember which choices those actors made in those steps into the roles and ponder which ones I’d like, or duplicate, and which I absolutely abhored and would prefer to go a different route altogether in…

I know, I know. I dream weird dreams. But can you believe that none of my fellow high school “actors” would go over some last minute rehearsals with me? Fuckers. I hope whatshername doesn’t go to prom with them. I hope she goes with the captain of whatever team or one of those assholes from the FBLA. The same goes for the hand job.

Anyways, as bizarre and frustrating as it was, it was an awesome dream, if I can sound like (more of) a nerd for a moment. Very cool stuff. I mean, the dream itself was tense and manic, a lot of running around and panicking while at the same time trying to explore so many options in my head, but… it was exhilarating as well. Incredibly so.

Ah, what dreams may come…

‘Why couldn’t Ophelia Save Hamlet? That’s another of my questions actually.’

‘Because, my dear Julian, pure ignorant young girls cannot save complicated neurotic over-educated older men from disaster, however much they kid themselves that they can.’

‘I know that I’m ignorant, and I can’t deny that I’m young, but I do not identify with Ophelia!’

‘Of course not. You identify yourself with Hamlet. Everyone does.’

-from from The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch (via Tyler Coates).

from here.

As I mentioned above, or as you might have inferred from above, Hamlet is by no means my favorite character in his eponymous tale. It’s Ophelia. Someday I hope to see a version of the story from her point of view. I especially mention this because when I had the dream that I shared with you again just recently, the girl playing Ophelia in the high school play stood out to me as perfect casting. And it was a shame too because if Hamlet hadn’t come around and fucked up her life, Ophelia might’ve been happy.