Join Kern Living host Ryan Nelson as he interviews Karin Harmon and Perrin Swanson, actors in the upcoming Stars Playhouse production of "Bernhardt/Hamlet."
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Good morning and welcome to Current Living.
00:09 I'm your host Ryan Nelson,
00:11 and I hope you all are having a great Tuesday.
00:13 We're kicking off today's show with two members
00:15 of the upcoming Bernhardt and Hamlet play
00:17 that will be at Starr's Theater,
00:18 I mean, excuse me, Starr's Playhouse.
00:20 How are you all doing, and can you introduce
00:22 yourselves to the current county?
00:23 - Good morning, my name's Karen Harmon,
00:25 and I'll be playing Sarah Bernhardt.
00:27 - I'm Perrin Swanson, and I am the director
00:29 and playing Edmund Rostand.
00:31 - Okay, now you're recreating a story
00:34 based off of somebody that actually lived.
00:37 Was it hard to do that?
00:38 - Well, no, because there's so much information out there.
00:42 Sarah Bernhardt was someone that they considered
00:44 the world's first celebrity.
00:46 She made sure she was out there all the time.
00:49 So I've read her biography.
00:51 There's some video of her online,
00:53 some performances she did early on.
00:55 So I was able to watch those and get a sense
00:57 of how she moved and how she looked on screen.
00:59 - Okay, now your character, would you be able
01:02 to tell us about yours?
01:03 - Yeah, Edmund Rostand is a poet and a playwright.
01:07 He's most famously known for writing
01:09 Cyrano de Bergenac, which has been adapted many times
01:13 in many different ways.
01:15 He also wrote many plays for Sarah,
01:16 like La Samaritaine, which was a critical triumph.
01:21 - Okay, now would you be able to tell us
01:24 a little bit more about the play?
01:25 For some of us at home that maybe haven't seen
01:27 Hamlet since high school,
01:29 maybe don't know too much about it.
01:31 - Well actually, the play is relatively new.
01:33 It was written in 2019, so it's a very, very new play
01:37 that is simultaneously Hamlet and also about Sarah Bernhardt
01:42 and her struggle of trying to find a new path forward.
01:48 She's aged out of playing the ingenue.
01:51 She doesn't want to be the old maid anymore.
01:53 And so she's trying to keep herself relevant.
01:55 And so she decides, I'm gonna take on Hamlet as a woman,
01:58 which in 1897 France was a very big thing to do.
02:03 - Now where can everybody get tickets for this?
02:07 - Tickets can be found at the Stars BMT website.
02:10 You can also call the box office at 661-325-6100.
02:15 - All right, she got the phone number down.
02:17 Perfect, it's also on the screen.
02:19 So if you want to get tickets,
02:20 head to that website on the screen,
02:22 or you can call that phone number.