The Jamestown Community College Uncommoners get right to their places on set as they receive directions from Emily Drew. It takes little time as there is virtually no chatter while hitting their marks.

For Drew, she doesn’t have to coax her actors to get into their characters.

Drew’s passion for all things related to theater is absorbed by her actors as they come to rehearsals ready to perform and ready to take direction.

Shown from left are Cal Boozel as Ophelia, and Ethan Tyger as Polonius rehearsing a scene in “Hamlet.”

“Hamlet” is the spring production for the Uncommoners. This is Drew’s second time directing at JCC. In 2023, Drew directed the Uncommoners’ production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Drew is an artist in residence through Creatives Rebuild New York. The Jamestown native graduated from Jamestown High School and completed her professional performance training at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Shakespeare and Company. Drew is a founding member of Madness Most Discreet Theatre Co., a performance collective creating interactive reimaginings of classical texts.

Talking with Drew, she said that there are many aspects about directing that she likes, but her actors helped her bring new life to the text of “Hamlet.”

“My favorite thing about directing ‘Hamlet’ has been finding a love for this play that I thought that I didn’t love. And I think that has happened through these actors and the life they’ve brought to the characters,” Drew admitted. “There have been moments in each scene with every character that I found a new, exciting meaning to the text.”

Drew said that she has cut some parts of the text to make it accessible to modern audiences, and to focus on the themes of love and relationships, and power and grief.

With “Hamlet,” Drew is revisiting another William Shakespeare text as she has an affinity for Shakespeare.

“I primarily love Shakespeare because I think that it (his text) is like music. It must be heard and seen. And so for an actor, that’s amazing. It is an active athletic pursuit of beautiful musical language. So, I love Shakespeare because it requires performance, and I love performance,” Drew noted.

Cast members include Morgan Tobio of New Haven, Conn., as Hamlet; Cal Boozel of the town of French Creek as Ophelia; Ethan Tyger of Lakewood as Polonius; Camden Drayer as Laertes, Colin Drayer as Horatio, and Kaden Weber as Claudius, all of Warren, Pa.; Karlie Blodien of Jamestown and Rachel Leroy of Lakewood as Gertrude; and Missy Wilcox of Falconer as Rosencrantz.

Colin Drayer likes the freedom of expression with his character.

“I like that Horatio can be played in many different ways. And I feel like I personally am taking the Horatio in a way I haven’t seen other people take him. And I like that. I like the freedom of expression,” Colin Drayer said.

And he said about Shakespeare that most people tend not to like the author until they start to understand what his work really means. “And then you start liking him,” Colin Drayer noted.

Weber said that even though his character is a villain, he finds Claudius very charming.

“I like that he’s not just the stereotypical villain because you could look at him that way. He does all these horrible things. And then he just wants to kill Hamlet. You could look at him as just the regular evil type, but I like the fact that he’s more charming. And he likes to get everyone on his side,” Weber added.

Boozel said her character has so much love to give and sometimes that gets overlooked, and Boozel added that Ophelia is one of Shakespeare’s best female characters.

“There’s so much to her that you just don’t see it because at first you think Ophelia, daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes lover of Hamlet, but she’s just her own person. She has so much love to give,” Boozel said.

Tobio admits that all the characters in the play are very complex, and that there are so many different ways to interpret the events.

“This could all be imagined by Hamlet. This could be a memory. This could really be happening, but we only see small portraits of the most intense moments.

Drew said she is very thankful that JCC has supported her work.

“I’m really grateful JCC is investing in the arts the way that they have,” Drew said.

“It takes time to build community arts programming and it can be challenging when cultural capital is continually viewed through an economic lens — the arts are so much more than the money they make. JCC deserves kudos for making visual and performing arts a priority.”

The show is scheduled for Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in the Scharmann Theatre. On Saturday, there also is a 2:30 p.m. performance scheduled. The production will be performed in a black box format, so seating is limited to 100 per show. Tickets are available online at sunyjcc.edu/uncommoners.