Like pretty much all millennials, I spent my youth playing video games. Zelda was followed by SingStar, The Sims, and Skyrim – and at some point, there was no escaping it: GTA, short for Grand Theft Auto. Stealing cars, flying helicopters, committing crimes – in short, living the gangster fantasy. The perfect distraction from identity crises and the struggles of everyday life. It was also a distraction for actors Sam Crane and Mark Trost, who found themselves in their third COVID lockdown in London in January 2021, unsure of what to do with themselves. Isolated and anxious about the future, they started meeting up in Grand Theft Auto. After one particularly chaotic police chase, they accidentally ended up in a theater within the virtual city of Los Santos. Standing on its stage, they asked each other – half-joking at first, then more seriously – whether it would be possible to perform Hamlet inside the game. Together with Sam’s wife, filmmaker Pinny Grylls, they embarked on an unusual creative journey. Casting actors wasn’t easy in a game where gunfire is a constant backdrop. Finding locations and writing a script proved equally unpredictable. But soon, their avatars were rehearsing Shakespeare’s play about revenge and madness against the often dramatic cityscapes of Los Santos – a fictional world where death and destruction are the norm. Between absurd rehearsal scenes – where fights and accidental deaths frequently interrupted the process (“The thing is, you can’t stop production just because somebody died”) – unexpectedly moving moments emerged among the cast members.

Because while the entire film and play unfold in a virtual world, the actors themselves were at home, sitting in front of their computers or PlayStations, facing real-life fears and uncertainties once they took off their headsets. I never thought I’d be moved to tears by a video game stream. Even less did I think that the game in question would be GTA. It was a first. And now, you can experience it for yourself. On 26.02.2025, the now multi-award-winning film Grand Theft Hamlet celebrates its premiere on the streaming platform Mubi in partnership with HAU. After the screening, there will be a virtual Q&A with directors Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane, alongside animator, visual artist, and software developer Friedrich Kirschner. How could it be otherwise? Virtually, of course.

Text: Inga Krumme / Stills: Grand Theft Hamlet

HAU2, Hallesches Ufer 34, 10963 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map
Grand Theft Hamlet 26.02.2025 20h, free entry (with ticket).

@hauberlin 
@mubideutschland