JF: The title is a line from Hamlet, and it didn’t even occur to me how perfect it was until the new addition of Horatio as Hamlet’s half-brother. It is perfect because no one is telling the truth in the play, except Hamlet and Ophelia. Everyone is presenting a counterfeit to everyone else.

THC: Obviously the story is very different, but how are you trying to make it unique from other versions of Hamlet?

JF: I was very conscious of the fact that a big chunk is from Hamlet, and part of is still very hackneyed, like “Alas, poor Yorick,” and “Get thee to a nunnery,” but these phrases have become so ingrained in our culture that it is hard to look at them differently. I looked at the word, what the characters were thinking and doing, and just let the blocking come from that. In the “To be or not to be” speech, all of it has been cut except the first line and the last line, it gives it a different approach. It prevents the audience from reciting the lines along with the actor, they have to ask themselves: “How is this different?”

THC: What is the ultimate message that you are trying to communicate?

JF: I never like the idea of saying this is what I was trying to say. I want the audience to take from it whatever they want. If they come out of it questioning their friendships, then that is a shame. I want them to think about what authorship is, because I don’t think Shakespeare wrote the original Hamlet story, I think the character Hamlet wrote the play Hamlet. I want them to think about their friendships and how people change when they are around different people. And if I can get people to think about Hamlet, that’s great too.