The audience files into the theater. Lights fade out, chatting subsides. Lights up. a figure enters from stage left. They are holding a skill. . Lights fade out. Applause.
The audience files out. They loiter in the lobby, they go out for drinks, pizza, etc. Some of them talk about the performance (to each other, to friends they meet after the show) enthusiastically, some of them regret the two hours, most in-between. They go home, go to sleep, go on with their lives.
The point is: Nobody in the audience saw the skull as a Hamlet reference. It didn’t even occur to them.
A woman sitting in the third row, dead center, saw a person carrying a skull:
“Oh I get it,” she thinks, “it’s like this is a murderer, they just killed someone…!” (as opposed to: “this is Hamlet”)
“Oh I get it,” thinks her friend, “it’s like the skull represents the inner life, like we’re all the same on the inside…” (again, not “Hamlet.”)
“Oh I get it,” thinks another, further back to the right, “this is a doctor, some kind of anatomist…”
More: “–an occultist?”
“–an archaeologist!”
“–is it a Halloween decoration?”
(Nobody saw Hamlet)
“–perhaps this character is an artist, preparing a still life? Like a memento mori?”
“–or the performance itself is the still life?”
“–it must represent fear…”
“–y’know maybe this person just happens to be carrying a skull?”
“–this has got to be a Marina Abramovic reference”
“–maybe a deconstructed Hirst…?”
“–The Punisher!”
“Oh, I get it–” thinks one, “–they’re just trying to be weird or random.”
Better still: A single audience member sees Hamlet. She brings this up in conversation afterwards. Her remark receives the same appreciative nods.
And someday: Every single audience member is distracted on the way to the theater: A helicopter catches their attention, or the spectacle of children at play, leaf-strained sunlight dappling the pavement, some kind of weird bug. A song blaring from a passing car reminds one of an old friend, to whom they write a letter. The feeling of bare feet on shag carpet, which must be investigated. A universe of dust floating through a sunbeam, the text of Hamlet discovered on a bookshelf. None of them make it to the performance.
Curtain call.