Free The Hamlet Murders by David Rotenberg Page A

a windowpane. When they were finished, they turned to me as if to say: So what do you think, Coach?
    What I thought was that hunger was an important part of being a professional actor and that these young hungry actors deserved better understanding of their art than there was available in the present acting texts.
    That was the beginning of the thinking that led to this book.
    Three of these four aggressive young actors barged their way into the profession. The fourth – well . . . anger out of its cage – decompartmentalized, if you will – can be terribly destructive.
    That was one of the few times in my life that I have taught beginner actors. I still don’t teach beginners and this book is not intended for beginner actors, although if you have enough hunger, you’ll be able to use the ideas and methods outlined in this book to make you a better actor.
    Like most good ideas, the concepts in this book are easy to learn but may take quite a while to apply. It is easy enough to learn the rules of chess. It takes a lifetime to gain any mastery of the game.
    Nothing of any value can be put on a 3-by-5 index card – except the thought that nothing of any value can be put on a 3-by-5 index card.
    Acting teaching can be roughly broken down into those explorations that are about finding notes on an actor’s piano keyboard and those explorations that are about how to play the notes that an actor has already discovered. This book, and my work for the past 20 years, is primarily about how to play the notes you have found. How to understand what the notes you have mean, which notes are not good any longer, which have never been good, which notes can replace bad notes, which notes are available to you but you don’t know it – and most important – how to finger your stops and depress your frets so that you can play the notes you have together in a fashion that as Hamlet says “will discourse most eloquent music.” (Hamlet, Act 3, Sc. 2)
    The actor’s territory is the human heart. It is an uncharted land defended by terrifying dragons but it also contains great glories, music and deep human truths. To the hungry actor it is the only land worthy of investigating.
    This book attempts to give the actor a compass and survival kit for that strange land. It includes sketch maps and points of reference in that divine territory – whose exploration can for the artist, and should, last a lifetime.

    Fong put down the pages. Who writes an introductory chapter to a book based on the knowledge gained in a lifetime of work and then commits suicide?
    The next page was blank. The page after that was not. This page was filled with Geoff’s red felt-pen scratchings. The top part of the page seemed to be an effort to write a section on “being present,” a term that Fu Tsong had often used. But that ended quickly and was replaced with a set of large angry words: How, with her gone? How? How the fuck without her!
    Fong felt sick. He had no doubt who the “her” was that Geoff referred to. It was his dead wife and Geoff’s dead lover – Fu Tsong.

CHAPTER SIX
RESPONSE

    G eoff’s death was duly noted by some of the Canadian press, but because he had done much of his work in the United States the notices were small, buried and perfunctory. Had he been either a member of one of the Old Anglo families who still ran the theatre world in Canada or had he spent six weeks in Czechoslovakia, rather than sixteen years in America, his death would have been worthy of several column inches in the entertainment sections and would no doubt have been followed by engaging eulogies delivered by middleaged ponytailed men.
    One theatre that had contracted Geoff to direct in the upcoming season actually breathed a sigh of relief at his passing. The artistic director had promised his business manager a show to direct but had overlooked this obligation after the acting company raised a considerable fuss. But Geoff’s death provided the answer gift-wrapped