There is a genre of theater you might call the Avant-Garde Think Piece. Instead of a plot, the show "analyzes" a "text" for "postmodern" "themes." If it could, the performance would be riddled with footnotes, and patrons would walk out with a thick bibliography and an intense desire to read Jacques Lacan. The style is cerebral, condescending and induces headaches. Freshman college students are required to watch such productions; they frown for two-plus hours, and they resolve never to watch theater again.
Her Hamlet, a new piece presented by the University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theatre, comes dangerously close to an AGTP. Created by Lisa Jackson-Schebetta and Theo Allyn, Her Hamlet takes a "canonical work" (William Shakespeare's Hamlet) and "unpacks" the "text" from the "perspective" of little Jude, Shakespeare's precocious daughter. Jude (played by Allyn) re-enacts her father's plays, "interpreting" them in a "fractured" format, thereby questioning the "structure" of her forebear. Her Hamlet also "addresses gender," because Jude performs the "masculine roles," while her "sister" (Robert Frankenberry) takes the "female" roles...