Progress

One of the goals I set for myself for this production is to make the relationship between the Macbeths and their murder of Duncan plausible. This has been the underlying problem with nearly every production I have seen and most of the movies.

Last night working with the two actors I have for these roles I believe we made huge progress in cracking this dilemma. Both are fantastic actors who can convey subtlety as well as a broad range of emotions and motivations. I was momentarily scared as we worked on Act 1 Scene 5. Lady M was terrifying as these lines came to life:
"Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant."

After we had finished I realised how much I owe to a newsgroup called Act Pro that I used to be a member of and to people, conversations and experiences which have developed my rudimentary understanding of Meisner, Stanislavsky and method. We had both Ms in the moment and alive to the motivation in the script and alive to the intentions of who they were and where they were going. Add to that drawing on their own personal experiences to make the moment alive with genuine emotion and we really were creating.

This is shaping up as the best production I have done. False hope / vaulting ambition? I too as a director am caught in the desire to create something based in authenticity - not just for the actors and the audience but also for me.

Audition times

Auditions are on 25 May 2008, Elmwood Auditorium, Aikmans Rd, Christchurch.

• Macbeth and Lady Macbeth auditions from 9am
• Other characters 11 am on
• Witches from 2 pm

Anyone that can't make these times should contact me directly.

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth actors will be auditioned together with each actor getting to read with at least two others.

Witches will be auditioned in groups. The witches will be dancing so we’re looking for witches who can move.

A working definition of evil

I've been considering evil and magic and how they should work in this production.

An American psychotherapist, M Scott Peck, wrote a book about evil based on working with patients who he concluded were evil. (People of the Lie; 1983) It's a great book for working out what evil might look like. His conclusions were evil is a conscious decision to not grow or prevent someone from growing to preserve an image or view of oneself. That is people who lie, cheat and misrepresent and manipulate people to preserve their own ego. When I read the book 15 years ago I did so to understand someone I had identified (I believe correctly) as evil.

There are many examples in the book of couples who are working together and their relationships are based on lying so that things remain as they want them. There's the chilling story of a couple where the husband had put himself in his wife's thrall [Peck's word not mine]because he was weak and she was dominant and in doing so he had got more and more pathetic and awake every day to head the word 'kill' in his head, while she would call him pathetic and useless to his face. In the end he kept trying to slit his throat because he knew he couldn't live without her. She on the other hand got dominance over him.

Other stories dealt with individuals - one a woman who put herself in therapy for four years but lied the whole time and had no control over anyone, couldn't hold down a job or a relationship, but didn't want her ego / spirit contraption deconstructed. that is she had this weird fantasy view of the world that everything she didn't like was someone else's fault and that she set the rules for any job she went to, any relationships she had and how she dealt with power and telephone companies. And she wouldn't change. Peck's view was a part of her probably wanted to get well but most of her (the intellect and ego) was not prepared to change and let people set rules for her. Also interestingly she had no empathy for anyone - other people just had to do what she wanted and she would impose and ascribe her feelings on them.

Anyway there were many other examples in the book but the important things for Macbeth are:

• Macbeth must voluntarily give himself and his will to achieve goals by killing others because in some sick way it reinforces him (and him is his ego / ambition / view of himself as pre-eminient over others...)
• Lady Macbeth has to also voluntarily give herself to the same goals (which she clearly does with her unsex me speech)
• Both must manipulate and lie to the same ends and reinforce each other while they are both working together (which they do) they can appear charming and civilised but their language and actions disguise their real intent
• The witches are a catalyst but the point at which Macbeth decides to kill Duncan is when he becomes taken by evil (but never, as we learn in his soliquoys, 100 % evil)
• The Macbeths should lose empathy with other people (which they do)

The other thing, rereading Peck's book, is that Shakespeare got it spot on. I had said in an earlier post that understanding of psychology had changed and that this meant portraying the Macbeths realistically is harder today. The clear message from this is that if you adopt a psychology of evil it works very well.

The stark soulessness of the 'tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow' speech matches up with something in Peck's book: he quotes Simone Weil as writing "Imaginary evil is romantic and varied, real evil is gloomy monotonous, barren and boring."

Audition notes

I'll be putting a page or two of notes for auditionees or people interested in auditioning up on this blog sometime this month. Anyone interested can also see the notes via Facebook or via Elmwood players. Or send me a note via this blog.

Why does Macbeth kill Duncan?

Traditional explanations are that:

a) Macbeth, with his vaulting ambition, had already secretly considered killing Duncan to take the throne (propounded by two of my teachers at school and the lecturer at uni) OR
b) The witches and Lady Macbeth urge him to do it (but is he really that weak?)

The problem is he knows it's evil and speaks against the deed. And he only discovers he's not going to be king after the great military victories in the first scenes.

It may be ambition and pique, but if he is such a great and loyal lord and, as he asserts how wrong it is, it still lacks credibility. To kill a man who has been so good to you, in a time when everyone is secure, to destroy everything with a personal and bloody regicide- in your own house? It doesn't make sense: he'd have to be unhinged, or missing the bit of the brain that deals with consequences.

It would work if Duncan was an idiot rather than a saintly and loved King OR if the decision to make the King's son was patently unjust and wrong for the kingdom - that is that Macbeth's claim was stronger. The problem is Malcolm is painted as a saint as well. The way Macbeth is written though he is far to self-aware.

So why has he embraced evil and a course he knows is wrong?

There are two possibilities I want to explore-
1 He is a great warrior but has other character flaws than vaulting ambition. What he does best is solve problems with violence, and for all his ability to reason and talk he is such a good killer that's his solution to an injustice. Also his flaws may include being so self absorbed he doesn't understand consequences or simply can't visualise them.

2. He wants the throne AND the witches and Lady Macbeth have either entrhalled him or created a space where somehow the murder seems to be acceptable all right - despite the angels of heaven calling against it. After all Lady Macbeth is the one who has called on the powers of evil to possess her.

Macbeth seems divided over the first killing and then is driven by his need for security for the others. I like the idea that somehow the witches and Lady Macbeth have conned or enchanted him to be blind to the outcomes.

Macbeth himself

The best Macbeth I've seen was Nicol Williamson in the 1980s BBC version. A strong warrior, and to me he captured the haunted, isolated nature of the character. He played it, as I remember it, as a little on the foolhardy side spurred on by his battle success and physical strength - when in doubt kill someone. He consulted the witches and you could see the hesitation in his eyes as he sought counsel. He was great but flawed.

In contrast Jason Connery and James McAvoy playing the chef Macbeth in the 2005 version the were just too competent and likable. In my mind they played it like they were kings - not someone wearing garments that were too big. And in both cases I had trouble believing they'd do it. And Jason Connery seemed to be consulting the witches because it was in the script.

The Beckhams

I've never seen a Macbeth / Lady Macbeth combination and characters that have really worked for me. The closest was a production in Gisborne on the pier in the middle of summer in about 1994. Lady Macbeth was played as disturbed right from the start, and Macbeth was either played as vague with bursts of enthusiasm or that was just the actor.

Anyway I discussed Lady Macbeth as a bit like Pauline Hanson the problem is who would Macbeth be? What would they look like as a couple? What is the dynamic? And that's where most productions fall down for me. Most versions play it like they're deeply in love - but how does that work? I've asked a few people and have answers like 'ah yes but that's why they're different - they're giving in to their dark sides, ambition'. I think when people say that, if you believe them, you should give them a wide berth. I can't find that sort of relationship in myself coming from love. It's more Charles Manson and Squeaky Fromm. To me to be realistic it needs to come from a very sick, dysfunctional relationship. It's more David Bain's family than Burton and Taylor.

Discussing it tonight the Beckhams seem a nice parallel. They're not brutal enough, but you know something is not right. He's a great warrior. And you know Posh is in charge.

Okay how many Macbeth's are there? random thoughts from 1 am

This entry looks at my central confusion with the script and performances:

1. At least there's only one text! Unlike many of Shakespeare's surviving works there is only one version of Macbeth (first folio 1623). It is known the play was revised and there are many questions about whether there was a missing subplot or whether some parts, such as Hecate's scene, aren't original.

Wikipedia has a lot to say about the origins:
Many scholars conjecture the likely date of composition to be between 1603 and 1606.[2] As the play seems to be aimed at celebrating King James's ancestors and the Stuart accession to the throne in 1603 (James believed himself to be descended from Banquo),[3] they argue that the play is unlikely to have been composed earlier than 1603; and suggest that the parade of eight kings—which the witches show Macbeth in a vision in Act IV—is a compliment to King James VI of Scotland. Other editors conjecture a more specific date of 1605-6, the principal reasons being possible allusions to the Gunpowder Plot and its ensuing trials. The Porter's speech (Act II, scene III, lines1-21), in particular, may contain allusions to the trial of the Jesuit Henry Garnet in spring, 1606; "equivocator" (line 8) may refer to Garnet's defence of "equivocation" [see: Doctrine of mental reservation], and "farmer" (4) to one of Garnet's aliases.[4] However, "farmer" is a common word, and the concept of "equivocation" was also the subject of a 1583 tract by Queen Elizabeth's chief councillor Lord Burghley, and of the 1584 Doctrine of Equivocation by the Spanish prelate Martin Azpilcueta, which was disseminated across Europe and into England in the 1590s.[5]
Scholars also cite an entertainment seen by King James at Oxford in the summer of 1605 that featured three "sibyls" like the weird sisters; Kermode surmises that Shakespeare could have heard about this and alluded to it with the weird sisters. The earliest account of a performance of the play is April 1611, when Simon Forman recorded seeing it at the Globe Theatre.

Anyway the point of this is that there is only one accepted script and so it should be pretty easy to work out how it should be done.

2. As I said in the introductory post I have seen a few productions of Macbeth -Five. I've also seen four maybe five film versions. And I have read the script many times,and studied it at school and university.

My fundamental issue is the script never reads like the plays I have seen.

In fact there are things I see in the script that don't seem to be part of any of the stage versions I've seen. Some examples 'fair is foul' and 'foul is fair' - this works for Lady Macbeth who is usually played as a very attractive woman, but therefore the ugly witches must be fair of spirit.

When I see film and stage versions Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are played as having a great love for each other.... while I can see that at a pinch in the script I more readily see some screwed up disfunctional people who really don't know enough about love.

Lady Macbeth has been played since the late 1600s (by the Davenants) as a powerful woman, yes that can work but it doesn't seem real to me. That tradition was followed by Sarah Siddons (1785) and more recently by Dame Judi Dench. In equating her character to real people I see someone who is at the beginnng of the play determined, but not necessarily as strong and intelligent. I come back to the type of people I see around me, and if say Annette Presley of Slingshot, or Helen Clark, or Theresa Gattung were Lady Macbeth they wouldn't disappear, let Macbeth mess up and then kill themselves. I see Lady Macbeth is someone whose ambition is way over their ability to understand what's going on - knowing the price of everything and value of nothing, more like Australia's One Nation founder Pauline Hanson.

My question is 'can I see Lady Macbeth and Macbeth himself in the people around me and in the headlines?' I can't see the traditionally staged Macbeths but I can see the sort of middle class people who swindle the rest of their siblings out of an estate for sheer greed, not really caring or understanding the long term consequences for them and their heirs. I can also see small-minded hoods that rip people off, deal P, and then spend much of their time in the district court, and who eventually kill their toddler.

Lady Macbeth could equally be an ambitious narrow-minded shrew. Macbeth could be a great warrior but with little understanding of niceties. What I potentially see is the wife of a rugby club Captain who schemes and plots for her husband to President of the club but for no real end. He could be the dumb star player who likes the idea of being President and is egged on, but only knows how to play on the field. So in the middle of the AGM he tackles the existing President and takes him out of the game, and then takes on the rest of the club in the same way till they finally take him out.

So set these sort of people in a time when war and murder are all around them, and they can seize the throne, and Macbeth is what you get.

The book of 'coarse acting' talks about how many actresses are interested in having pretty dresses for their part whether they dresses are appropriate for the role or not. I've come to the conclusion that Lady Macbeth is paying the price for all the other crap women's parts in Shakespeare so everyone who gets the role is determined to mine it for strength. It's not to say that Lady Macbeth can't be strong and dominating in an interpretation, but that is always how she is played.

No I'm not wanting to set the play in a rugby club, nor dumb down both the characters, but it seems to me that to have 'ill-fitting' garments they both need to be clearly unskilled to be monarchs. Yet they are always played as great heroic figures rather than limited people who get way out of their depth by temporarily upsetting the natural order.

Another issues I see is that every teacher I have heard going on about Macbeth has come back to 'vaulting ambition' that leads to Macbeth's downfall. I see equally he has fallen into bad company... his wife and those witches at least egging him on. If the script is really a lot about magic 'the charm's wound up' isn't he also in part in a thrall? It seems to me all the productions and all but one of the films seems to gloss over this aspect and confine the witches to theatrical fortune tellers.
The terror of the production is about the fact this magic exists it's demonic and people under spells become blood-crazed murderers.

If you play him this way Macbeth can be a great intelligent warrior who wakes up after the deed is done and it's to late.

Anyway these are some of the issues that I want to address as the play is worked through. Who knows I may end up with 3 crones, a very strong Lady Macbeth and Macbeth himself as a strapping clearly royal figure?

In terms of performance if there is no hero - it's not good theatre. The tension I see is balancing real characters and making them compelling in an atmosphere where magic and murder are commonplace.