“Actor Guinness Menzies has landed his dream role: he’s playing Hamlet at the Stratford Festival. But just before a matinée performance, he suddenly finds himself in the Underworld, a strange realm as frightening as it is hilarious, where time is seriously out of joint. Has he gone mad? Is he dreaming? Has he died…? Meanwhile, teenager Jeremy reaches out to Guinness online as he wrestles with his own version of Hamlet’s famous life-or-death dilemma.

Incisive and comical, Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Hamlet-911 interrogates white male privilege in the theatre while also grappling with urgent themes of adolescent suicide and personal crisis.

“Our play lives in a world where, to quote Shakespeare, ‘the truth will out.’ By hook or by crook, by rope or by joke,” says Palmer. “And, the truth makes demands; it calls upon us to give – often without being thanked or recognized. The truth challenges us to grow up enough to care about those who come after us.”

This production was dedicated to the memory of actor and civil rights activist Shirley Douglas, a member of the acting company in 1989 and 1990.”

ORIGINALLY COMMISSIONED AND DEVELOPED BY THE STRATFORD SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL AND VITA BREVIS ARTS. WORLD PREMIERE AT THE STRATFORD FESTIVAL.