When he was cast as Hamlet at age 24, Conor Madden thought his stage career was about to take off – but then an accident during a sword-fighting scene left him with serious injuries. No-one knew whether he would ever act again.A piercing silence filled the theatre as Conor lay on the floor of the stage, listening to his surroundings. His body was frozen. He knew he was hurt.Despite his youth, Conor had been playing the lead role in a modern production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet – a role usually given to established actors a decade older than him. It was a huge honour.The cast had already performed the play many times, but they had just moved to a new theatre in a different city.Conor remembers the clang of a metal sword falling to the floor beside him, and a fellow actor cradling him and asking, “Are you OK?”The 800-strong audience remained still, assuming this was part of the play.Then the silence was broken by the hurried footsteps of the company’s artistic director walking on stage. He apologised to the audience and said the show must end. There was a round of applause, and the curtain fell. Conor had always wanted to be an actor.”Initially I didn’t know why I wanted to do it. I just knew that I wanted to do it,” he says.Most of his relatives worked in manual professions such as building and painting.Conor was the first in the family to pursue a creative career.At 15, he got his break in a play that toured Ireland. After that, he studied acting at Trinity College Dublin for three years, constantly developing his skills and gaining connections throughout the industry.And then he was offered the most prestigious role he could imagine – Hamlet.”It was a great challenge. And I revelled in it and I really looked forward to it.”There is this weight of history behind it, the fact that lots and lots of famous actors have played Hamlet throughout the years. It’s made and broken careers, and broken actors,” he says.For five weeks Conor rehearsed and then performed in Dublin. “Everything was perfect. I was having an amazing time. Audiences loved it, the rest of the cast loved it, I loved it – it was all great,” he says. They then moved to the Everyman Palace Theatre in Cork, the Irish Republic’s second biggest city.Although the same set footprint was used, the stage was slightly smaller. The actors had some time to get used to it, but the final technical rehearsal had to be cut short before the final scene, in which Hamlet is mortally wounded.Given the success of their previous performances, the actors confidently made their way on stage, and everything went well until swords were drawn in the play’s climactic final moments.Conor and another actor found themselves standing closer to each other than usual – too close, it turned out. A rapier struck Conor just below the eye.As he fell back “it was like someone had hit slow motion on the video of my life,” he says. “On the way to the floor, the first thought I had was: ‘Uh-oh, something’s not right here.’ The second thought I had was, ‘We are totally, totally alone when we die.'”The sword did not go through Conor’s skull, but it fractured the orbital bone of his eye, and left him unable to move.”I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t really move. I just kept saying ‘Ambulance!'”
Culled from BBC