Hamnet, the Oscar-buzz film directed by Academy award-winning Chloé Zhao and starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, doesn’t arrive in UK cinemas until January 9. But a new exhibition is giving Londoners the chance to experience its ethereal Shakespearian world up close this month.
Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream is a collaboration between Zhao, Buckley and photographer Agata Grzybowska that began organically on the set of the film as a study of love, grief and tragedy that befalls the young William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes Shakespeare. The project evolved into a book, and now, a free exhibition in a Georgian terrace in Fitzrovia that includes photographs, sketches, drawings, writings, props and Tudoresque set pieces.
The title of the book and the exhibition (taken from a quote by Euripides) reflects how much of the filmmaking process was deeply rooted in dreams. Every morning Buckley, who plays Agnes Shakespeare, would wake up and begin writing “almost in a fever dream – continuing her dreams as if she were still inside them,” Grzybowska tells Broadsheet. “She shared all those writings with Chloé, and some parts of those dreams later became part of the script.”
Grzybowska was on set to capture stills but is not a traditional stills photographer; she has captured the Syrian civil war and protests in Ukraine, among other events. “[Zhao] told me that from the very beginning, she didn’t want a traditional photographer, she wanted a photojournalist for this project. She wanted me to capture the unseen.
“Each of us also brought different references and sources of inspiration and there was a natural flow between us. After a while Jessie shared her texts with me and I found them truly inspiring,” Grzybowska says. “I think that was when the idea of a book combining Jessie’s writings and my photographs appeared in Chloé’s mind. But the goal wasn’t to simply make a book about Hamnet or about the process of filmmaking. We wanted to create a story of its own – an alternative way of channelling the narrative through the voice of Agnes, Jessie Buckley’s character.”
And so it was with the exhibition. “It drifts away from the idea of a film retrospective and moves towards the concept of memory,” says Grzybowska. “It blurs the line between staged scene and private moment,” adds curator Simindokht Dehghani. “Costumed actors drift in and out of role; the camera captures not only their performance, but their breath. We are not watching a story unfold – we are witnessing something remembered.”
Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream in on until December 20. Entry is free and booking ahead is recommended. The book (Mack Books) is out now.
