Manuel Camacho is one of two actors playing Hamlet — they trade off on lines.
Manuel just turned 18 in December. He’s part of Ice the Beef — a New Haven group that said it’s devoted to ending inner-city gun violence.
“How do you play someone who is so vengeful, who is blinded by the bloodthirsty path of revenge?" Camacho asks. "That takes a lot emotionally to get into that headspace. Here I am, a youth activist fighting for peace, and on stage to be someone who does everything that I'm advocating against.”
Manuel said he’s enjoyed the turn from activist to actor.
“Being on stage has allowed me to not only be more expressive," Camacho said. "It has given me what I would call a theatre family, but also an ability to spread messages through a different line of art.”
Chaz Corman of Ice the Beef said it’s about meeting kids where they are.
“If you like to wrestle, we’re creating wrestling," Corman said. "If you like to do art, we're creating art. If you like basketball, we'll create that too. This is just one of the many different things that students do, they want to act. So we're doing Shakespeare.”
Elm Shakespeare Education Director Sarah Bowles said the students quickly connected with the play and its characters.
“We have this young person playing the king, playing Claudius, the bad guy," Bowles said. "And I see Eliza come through Claudius all the time. It's so exciting. When Claudius gets mad, I see how Eliza would react if she was mad. And she might even use some of those same words. The young actors are really coming through these characters. They're not putting on something that feels foreign.”
This is their second collaboration, after a version of “Romeo and Juliet” during the height of the pandemic in 2021. Bowles said “Romeo and Juliet” was an obvious choice for addressing youth violence, but “Hamlet” makes a lot of sense too.
“It's a story of revenge, right?" Bowles said. "His father, the king, died, and then suddenly his uncle marries his mother and becomes the new king. And he sees the ghost of his father. And the ghost of his father says 'It was actually your uncle who killed me.'"
She adds that the piece explores the difference between justice and revenge. Justice is the righting of a wrong. Hamlet didn’t want that.
“When you singularly seek revenge, often innocent people get caught in the crossfire," she said. "And that's what happens in Hamlet, is that five other people end up dead at the end of the play, including himself. That resonates very much with experiences in the community of seeking revenge for acts done, you know, well, she got me so I gotta get her back. He got my guy. So we have to go after him and get all of his guys.”
“This is something we see much too often in our inner city communities, is people seeking revenge for fallen loved ones," Camacho said. "Yes, these things happen, right? Your loved ones are taken. But the way that we seek justice does not have to be a path filled with so much bloodshed. Like in Hamlet.”
After the play, students will perform three short scenes inspired by real-life experiences. They say they’ll carry lessons for de-escalating gun violence in their communities.
