Hamlet Mortuus Est

We live under the crushing weight of time. Millions—perhaps billions—experience a constant sense of urgency, as if the universe itself were compressing the hours of our lives. Life expectancy grows with each generation, yet it feels as though we have less and less time for everything. The one truth we cannot escape echoes in Shakespeare’s words: “It is near, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain.”

How do we step off the stage? In how many ways do we learn to part with time? What has changed in our perception of time in today’s world—and how do we face the inevitability of death? Hamlet mortuus est is a meditation on time, on the feeling of time, on our time—our lives caught between urgency and eternity.

But time is inseparable from power. Shakespeare knew this better than anyone. He was sharp-eyed, ironic, defiant—attuned to the tremors of power in his age of transition, from a cumbersome feudal order to a restless, pragmatic modernity. Hamlet mortuus est confronts this same illusion of power: that it can outlast time, that it can grant immortality.

As director Levente Kocsárdi observes: “Power breeds dictators, and perhaps its most seductive lie is that power makes you eternal. But Shakespeare reminds us with disarming clarity: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returned to dust. And dust is but clay to stop a hole in a barrel. This truth applies to emperors and tyrants, to household despots, to the petty dictators of families and theatres—and perhaps, in the end, to each of us, patching up the world with the clay of our ambitions.”

Premiered in January 2025, Hamlet mortuus est has already traveled widely, with invitations to some of the most prestigious international festivals: Babel Festival Târgoviște, Underground Festival Arad, United Shakespeare Chișinău, and York Shakespeare Festival.