Into the Spotlight: M.F.A. Actor Rivka Borek’s Hamlet Experience
By Rivka Borek During my second year here in the M.F.A. program at A.C.T., a new email popped into my inbox. “Dear all,” the email began. “We have the incredible privilege of doing some developmental work on Hamlet in preparation for our opening show of the 2017–18 season at The Geary. This Hamlet will star John Douglas Thompson.” Um, what?! I had seen John in four plays in New York, and witnessed his tour-de-force performance in Satchmo at the Waldorf here at A.C.T. during my first year in the program. The fact that my classmates and I would be workshopping my favorite play with him seemed too surreal to be true. Peter Fanone, Rivka Borek, John Douglas Thompson, and Carey Perloff at the first rehearsal of Hamlet . Photo by Elspeth Sweatman. On the first day of the workshop, I entered Studio 9A and there John was! We all got to work, reading and discussing different scenes throughout the play. When we arrived at the famously tricky “nunnery scene,” Carey scann...