“The world will always see you as a child! You will never escape the gaze of others!” says the grief-stricken prince to Ophelia. Then, returning to Shakespeare’s script, he admonishes, “Get thee to a nunnery!” In Teatro La Plaza’s Hamlet, a cast of young adults with Down syndrome interweave the Dane’s tale with stories from their own lives and, in doing so, upend both of Hamlet’s assertions. They are certainly not children, and, though all eyes are on them, they are in control of the audience’s gaze. After a year-long devising process with director Chela De Ferrari, founder of Lima’s Teatro La Plaza, the cast has performed their Hamlet in over fifty-one cities and eleven countries. Its newest home is Theatre for a New Audience.
This production of Hamlet problematized so much of what I thought I knew about disability and about the play itself, two topics on which I have long considered myself an expert. As a lifelong Shakespeare enthusiast and the sibling of someone with autism, I am as sensitive to depictions of people with developmental disabilities as I am critical of Hamlet adaptations. I was skeptical. I worried that this performance would feel like a talent show: an enrichment opportunity for the performers rather than a standalone work of art. But I was wrong. The show did make me uncomfortable—the very first scene, for example, features an extreme closeup of a woman giving birth (the performers watched placidly; I squirmed). T here are frank conversations about sexuality and brutal expressions of rage, two feelings I have never associated with Down syndrome. But the discomfort I felt throughout the show wasn’t from a place of critical distance or concern for the performers’ wellbeing; it was my own growing pains. It was the discomfort of recognizing my narrow assumptions about these performers’ emotional landscapes.
For my money, Hamlet is the fullest and most complex portrait of interiority in the canon. By putting this text in the hands of people whose inner lives we are taught to dismiss, infantilize, and underestimate, De Ferrari and team find refreshing potential in the play and its performers. I noticed new ideas in Hamlet. I realized how much of the story is about rising to the occasion: the occasion of killing Claudius, the occasion of becoming king, and, for actors, the occasion of taking on one of Western theater’s most demanding roles. The cast of Teatro La Plaza’s Hamlet rises to and reshapes it.
Between shows, director De Ferrari took the time to answer a few of my questions over email. Teatro La Plaza’s Hamlet runs at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center through April 4.
Annie Rasiel: Can you tell me about the choice to open with a graphic image of childbirth?
Chela De Ferrari: At the beginning of the rehearsal process, one of the first things we asked the actors to do was to bring photographs, images from their lives, and share them with the group. Through those images, they would tell us something about their personal histories. After that, I asked them to choose just one image, the most important one for them. Only one. What surprised us was that many of them chose the photograph of their birth. They spoke about that moment with great detail, with images, with stories, even with what felt like memories. Their births clearly had a strong emotional and symbolic weight for them, so it felt meaningful to begin the piece with a video of a childbirth.
But it’s not only a reference to their personal histories; it’s also a theatrical gesture. The play opens with a birth, which is also the birth of the Hamlets, their own entry into the stage, into the world of acting, into the possibility of occupying the center of the action. It’s structural. The piece begins with birth and moves toward death—and at the end, there is a kind of epilogue, a reopening, a return to the body and to life. We all dance.
AR: What was your understanding of Down syndrome before this process? How is that understanding different now?
CDF: Before this process, before my first coffee with Jaime Cruz [one of the performers in Teatro La Plaza’s Hamlet], my understanding of Down syndrome was shaped by ignorance and prejudice, especially regarding ability. Jaime had been working as an usher at Teatro La Plaza for some time. One day, during an internal staff meeting, he stood up and said that his dream was to become an actor. That moment stayed with me, and shortly after, I invited him for coffee. That was our first real conversation, and in many ways, the beginning of this entire project. That first meeting with Jaime, which was long and very beautiful, made me aware of myself as a neurotypical person for the first time. That realization opened up new questions about who I am and how I relate to others. It also awakened a genuine desire for connection. In a way, my experience at the beginning of the process mirrors what many spectators go through when they encounter the play: a movement from prejudice to desire for connection.
I also realized that I used to see people with Down syndrome through a kind of mask. I would first see the condition, not the individual. Now, when I meet someone with Down syndrome, I relate in a very different way. And of course, with the eight actors, whom I know deeply, I don’t see the condition at all. I see each of them as individuals, with very distinct sensitivities, personalities, intelligences, senses of humor, and ways of being in the world.
The process also transformed my relationship to time and to listening. It required a different rhythm, a different pace, a different kind of attention—one that feels very close to my own nature, interestingly. I began to recognize similarities between the cast and me and realized how comfortable and free I felt when I was with them.
If someone had asked me, before this process, whether Down syndrome should somehow be eradicated (which is a terrible question, but one that does exist in the world) I think I might have said yes. Now, I feel that the world is better because people like these actors exist. Because people with Down syndrome, and with many other forms of difference, expand our understanding of what it means to be human.
AR: Why Hamlet? Why not make the show entirely about the actors’ stories?
CDF: That question was very present for us at the beginning. I felt it was important to place an iconic text, a text of great cultural value, in the hands of people who are not typically granted that kind of authority. Traditionally, playing Hamlet is reserved for actors who are considered intellectually, emotionally, and linguistically virtuosic. That is not how the world sees people with Down syndrome. That tension interested me, not simply as a provocation, but as a way of asking deeper questions: what happens when people who are usually kept at the margins occupy the center of the stage, and not in any play, but in a canonical one? What happens to the audience? What expectations are challenged? What ideas about ability, intelligence, or legitimacy begin to shift? There is something very powerful in the encounter, even in the friction, between Shakespeare and the actors’ lives. It was not about replacing their stories with Shakespeare, but about creating a space where their experiences and Shakespeare’s questions could meet and transform each other.
AR: Have you considered performing with a different cast? Is this a blueprint that you would like other actors to take on?
CDF: The piece is deeply rooted in the specific people who created it. Their voices, their biographies, their ways of being are not interchangeable. The structure of the work emerged from that encounter, so it is not easily transferable. If a performer leaves or enters the process, the piece changes. It is not a fixed script that can simply be reproduced. That said, we did have one very particular experience during our first season in Lima that made us reflect on this in a very concrete way. One of the actors became ill on the day of a performance and couldn’t go on. We had very little time to react, and we didn’t want to cancel the show—the rest of the cast didn’t want to lose the performance either—so we invited a neurotypical actor at the last minute. We gave him the text, and he performed the role reading his lines on stage. What was striking about that experience was that the actor who entered was at a disadvantage. He was the one who didn’t fully know the structure, the rhythms, the internal logic of the piece. The other actors guided him through the performance. They corrected him, they showed him where to stand, they helped him navigate the scene. The usual hierarchy was reversed. It became a very special performance. And, fortunately, the next day we had our actor back.
I am interested in the idea that the process could inspire other works, not as a blueprint to be replicated, but as an invitation to rethink how we create theatre, how we build authorship, and who is allowed to occupy certain spaces. This specific show isn’t something to reproduce, but perhaps it can open a path.
AR: Who do you hope sees this show?
CDF: I hope it reaches a very wide audience. Of course, it’s important for families and communities connected to Down syndrome to see the work, and many have told us that it has been meaningful for them. But I don’t think the piece is for them exclusively. I’m especially interested in audiences who may not have a direct relationship with disability, people who come with assumptions, uncertainties, or even discomfort, because the work operates very strongly in that encounter.
At the same time, it is very important where the piece is seen. This production has been presented in theaters like Theatre for a New Audience, Lincoln Center, The Barbican, Theatre de La Ville, the Centro Dramático Nacional in Spain, or Teatre Lliure in Barcelona—institutions that carry weight and history, and placing these actors at the center of those spaces is, in itself, a statement. It’s not only about visibility but also where that visibility happens. It’s about who is allowed to occupy the most symbolic, most prestigious stages. For me, the audience is not only defined by who comes to see the show, but also by the context in which the show is presented. And when this work enters those spaces, something shifts, even if only slightly, in how those spaces define what belongs there. I hope the show is seen by people who are willing to question how they look, and what they think they know, and I hope it continues to exist in spaces that amplify that question.
Tickets for Teatro La Plaza’s Hamlet can be purchased here.
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