From Hamlet to Holography, and back again

As an undergraduate at Churchill College, Cambridge, David Pizzanelli directed a production of Hamlet Q1, billed as the first Cambridge University performance in over 350 years. It ran in the Wolfson Theatre from 9 to 15 June 1977, sold out most nights, and was very well received by the 1,600 or so people who came to see it.

He then spent forty years, from 1980 to 2020, in holography, and was one of the few people lucky enough to be there at the start of an entirely new visual medium: embossed holography. He watched it grow into a global business. At Hollusions Ltd, his research into surface-relief holograms led to the first embossed rainbow hologram made in Europe. At SEE 3 (Holograms) Ltd he made surface-relief hologram masters for a range of clients, and at Light Impressions Ltd he worked on national ID cards for Pakistan, banknotes for Vietnam, tax seals for Hungary and a novel optical technology for the Italian Mint.

David holds a PhD in Holography from the Royal College of Art, and served as an elected Board Member, Chairman and Director of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association. He has acted as an expert witness in banknote litigation, and as a consultant on holography, anti-counterfeiting and authentication, including adversarial analysis of optical banknote features. In 2014 the IHMA gave him its Brian Monaghan Lifetime Award for Business Innovation.

Now David has returned to Hamlet. His aim is to establish that, far from being a ‘bad’ quarto, Hamlet 1603 is the first version of the play, written by William Shake-speare. His research is published at YoungShakespeare.fyi.