Some purists want to see all of any given Shakespearean play left in the performance. Of course this doesn't necessarily serve the audience well.
But to make sure I get it as right as I can I have been seeking advice on the edits.
Given this is an important play there are some considerations aside from performance issues - maintaining the rhythm (and iambic pentameter), all the key metaphors and critical lines is essential.
But if there are cuts that means lines and scenes need to go.
Once it was clear we need to remove some text the question has been what to remove. I have been talking with Scott Koorey who edited for the script that Loopen did last year and also looking at blogs and other sources.
The issue Scott believes is to look at what the intent of the cuts is. His production edited lines through-out but kept the scenes.
I've chosen to put Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, the witches, and possibly Duncan and Banquo at the core. Macduff and Malcolm are counterbalances of good but this can be demonstrated with a lot less dialogue. I'll also be endeavouring to 'show' rather than 'tell' with action where possible.
The cuts aren't finalised yet and I want to work on them some more.
31 March 2008
30 March 2008
Killing the Macduffs
When I originally looked at this production I didn't want to have anything to do with killing 10 year olds so in my first set of edits I cut out this murder from Act 4 scene 2.
I spose I have a personal distaste for this killing but moral revulsion is a key part of demonising Macbeth.
It has been put to me though that since I need a younger person for the apparitions I should leave it in. I have to think this through some more.
I spose I have a personal distaste for this killing but moral revulsion is a key part of demonising Macbeth.
It has been put to me though that since I need a younger person for the apparitions I should leave it in. I have to think this through some more.
25 March 2008
Oh NO!
Our very talented and excellent costume person is leaving town and can't do the production!!!
Historical Macbeth (as best we know)
http://www.pathguy.com/macbeth.htm
Shakespeare got his story from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. It's a fun read. Click here or here to read Holinshed.
Holinshed spends a lot of time on the incident in which Malcolm (who became a popular king) tests Macduff by pretending to be mean when he is really nice. Holinshed talks about the murder of King Duff by Donwald in the century before Macbeth. According to Holinshed, Donwald was nagged by his wife until he did the evil deed, and drugged the guards. Shakespeare adapted this for Macbeth.
I've read that Holinshed's section on Macbeth was largely derived from the work of one Hector Boece, Scotorum Historiae ("Chronicles of Scotland", 1526-7, translated from Latin into English by a John Bellenden in 1535).
It is evidently not online. I've also read that Boece's sources include the Chronica gentis Scotorum ("Scotichronicon") by John of Fordun in the early 1500's (he also writes about William "Braveheart" Wallace and Robin Hood), and Andrew of Wyntoun (1400's). John of Fordun seems to have been the first to record the story of the dialogue on kingship between Macduff and Malcolm. You may be able to find this book in an old university library, but I could not find it online. By the time the story of Macbeth had reached Holinshed, it was already mostly fiction.
Here's what we think really happened with Macbeth and the other characters.
In a barbaric era, population pressures made war and even the slaughter of one community by another a fact of life. Survival depended in having a capable warlord to protect life and property, prevent infighting, and protect from distant enemies. Groups of warlords would unite under the nominal leadership of one king to promote their common interests and war on more distant nations. While people pretended to believe in "the divine right of kings" and "lawful succession", continuing effective leadership was assured by warlords killing off the less capable family members.
The name "Macbeth" means "son of life", and is a Christian name rather than a patronymic (hence the "b" is lower case.) Macbeth would have signed his friends' high school yearbooks "Macbeth mac Findlaech" (McFinley). There are MacBeth families in Scotland and Nova Scotia.
Macbeth's father Findlaech was ruler ("mormaer", high steward) of Moray, at the northern tip of Scotland. Macbeth's mother's name is unknown, but she is variously said to have been the daughter of King Kenneth II or the daughter of King Malcolm II.
In 1020, Findlaech was killed and succeeded by his nephew Gillacomgain. In 1032, Gillacomgain and fifty other people were burned to death in retribution for the murder of Findlaech, probably by Macbeth and allies.
The historical Mrs. Macbeth was not named "Lady", but "Gruoch" (GROO-och). She was the daughter of a man named Biote (Beoedhe), who was in turn the son of King Kenneth III "the Grim" who Malcolm II had killed to become king. (Some say that Biote was the son of Kenneth II instead.) She was originally married to Gillacomgain. Their son was Lulach the Simple (i.e., stupid; no, Lady Macbeth didn't brain him.) After Macbeth killed Gillacomgain, he took his widow Gruoch for his own wife, and raised Lulach as their stepson. What a guy!
Centuries before Macbeth, King Kenneth MacAlpin, "founded Scotland" by uniting the Picts and the Scots, i.e., getting them to fight foreigners rather than each other. In this era, Gaelic custom required that the succession go via the male line, and that if an heir was not yet old enough to reign when the king died, the kingship went to whatever male adult was next in line. Since the succession was designed to ensure some stability in a world of warlords and infighting, this made sense. Kenneth MacAlpin's male line continued to King Malcolm II, who had at least two daughters but no sons, and he killed the last member of the male McAlpin line. One daughter, Bethoc, (Holinshed calls her Beatrice) married Abbanath Crinen, the secular hereditary abbot of Dunkeld, and gave birth to Duncan.
In 1034, Malcolm II was murdered at Glamis by his fellow warlords, possibly including his grandson Duncan. Then Duncan managed to kill his rivals and seize the throne. Duncan married Sibylla Bearsson and they had Malcolm and Donald "Bain".
--> Macbeth allied with Thorfinn of Orkney, a Norseman. Thorfinn was the son of Sigurd the Fat and Bethoc, apparently the same Bethoc who was Duncan I's father. Thorfinn Sigurdsson is variously called "Thorfinn I", "Thorfinn II", "Thorfinn Skull-Smasher", "Thorfinn the Black", and "Thorfinn Raven-Feeder" (ravens eat dead meat, including human corpses). Thorfinn and Macbeth defeated and killed Duncan I in a battle in Elgin in August 1040. Thorfinn ruled northern Scotland, and Macbeth ruled southern Scotland. According to accounts, Macbeth was a good king, strict but fair, for the first decade of his reign.
In 1054, Earl Siward of Northumberland, who spirited Malcolm to England after Duncan's death, invaded Scotland. According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, he met and defeated Macbeth at the battle of Birnam Wood / Dunsinane (July 27). Most of Macbeth's army were killed, but Macbeth escaped. Siward's son and nephew were also killed. According to the Chronicles of Ulster, Macbeth continued to reign and was actually killed three years later by Duncan's son Malcolm. Thorfinn II survived until 1064.
After Macbeth's death, Lulach claimed the kingship and had some supporters. Lulach was ambushed and killed a few months later by Malcolm.
Malcolm went on to reign as Malcolm III "Canmore" ("big head" or "great ruler"). He took Thorfinn's widow Ingibiorg for himself, and they had a son Duncan, who later ruled as Duncan II. After Ingibiorg died, Malcolm Canmore married Margaret, a princess of the old English royal family. Margaret was a woman of great personal piety, and is now honored as a saint by Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Three of their sons became kings in their turns.
Malcolm Canmore was an aggressive and successful warrior who invaded England several times. He was finally killed in Northumberland. The story is that a treacherous soldier, pretending to hand him a key on a spear, put the spear through his eye socket.
Donald Bane, was king twice (deposed for a time by Duncan II, who he later defeated and killed). Donald Bane was finally defeated, imprisoned, and blinded by King Edgar, one of the sons of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret.
Shakespeare got his story from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. It's a fun read. Click here or here to read Holinshed.
Holinshed spends a lot of time on the incident in which Malcolm (who became a popular king) tests Macduff by pretending to be mean when he is really nice. Holinshed talks about the murder of King Duff by Donwald in the century before Macbeth. According to Holinshed, Donwald was nagged by his wife until he did the evil deed, and drugged the guards. Shakespeare adapted this for Macbeth.
I've read that Holinshed's section on Macbeth was largely derived from the work of one Hector Boece, Scotorum Historiae ("Chronicles of Scotland", 1526-7, translated from Latin into English by a John Bellenden in 1535).
It is evidently not online. I've also read that Boece's sources include the Chronica gentis Scotorum ("Scotichronicon") by John of Fordun in the early 1500's (he also writes about William "Braveheart" Wallace and Robin Hood), and Andrew of Wyntoun (1400's). John of Fordun seems to have been the first to record the story of the dialogue on kingship between Macduff and Malcolm. You may be able to find this book in an old university library, but I could not find it online. By the time the story of Macbeth had reached Holinshed, it was already mostly fiction.
Here's what we think really happened with Macbeth and the other characters.
In a barbaric era, population pressures made war and even the slaughter of one community by another a fact of life. Survival depended in having a capable warlord to protect life and property, prevent infighting, and protect from distant enemies. Groups of warlords would unite under the nominal leadership of one king to promote their common interests and war on more distant nations. While people pretended to believe in "the divine right of kings" and "lawful succession", continuing effective leadership was assured by warlords killing off the less capable family members.
The name "Macbeth" means "son of life", and is a Christian name rather than a patronymic (hence the "b" is lower case.) Macbeth would have signed his friends' high school yearbooks "Macbeth mac Findlaech" (McFinley). There are MacBeth families in Scotland and Nova Scotia.
Macbeth's father Findlaech was ruler ("mormaer", high steward) of Moray, at the northern tip of Scotland. Macbeth's mother's name is unknown, but she is variously said to have been the daughter of King Kenneth II or the daughter of King Malcolm II.
In 1020, Findlaech was killed and succeeded by his nephew Gillacomgain. In 1032, Gillacomgain and fifty other people were burned to death in retribution for the murder of Findlaech, probably by Macbeth and allies.
The historical Mrs. Macbeth was not named "Lady", but "Gruoch" (GROO-och). She was the daughter of a man named Biote (Beoedhe), who was in turn the son of King Kenneth III "the Grim" who Malcolm II had killed to become king. (Some say that Biote was the son of Kenneth II instead.) She was originally married to Gillacomgain. Their son was Lulach the Simple (i.e., stupid; no, Lady Macbeth didn't brain him.) After Macbeth killed Gillacomgain, he took his widow Gruoch for his own wife, and raised Lulach as their stepson. What a guy!
Centuries before Macbeth, King Kenneth MacAlpin, "founded Scotland" by uniting the Picts and the Scots, i.e., getting them to fight foreigners rather than each other. In this era, Gaelic custom required that the succession go via the male line, and that if an heir was not yet old enough to reign when the king died, the kingship went to whatever male adult was next in line. Since the succession was designed to ensure some stability in a world of warlords and infighting, this made sense. Kenneth MacAlpin's male line continued to King Malcolm II, who had at least two daughters but no sons, and he killed the last member of the male McAlpin line. One daughter, Bethoc, (Holinshed calls her Beatrice) married Abbanath Crinen, the secular hereditary abbot of Dunkeld, and gave birth to Duncan.
In 1034, Malcolm II was murdered at Glamis by his fellow warlords, possibly including his grandson Duncan. Then Duncan managed to kill his rivals and seize the throne. Duncan married Sibylla Bearsson and they had Malcolm and Donald "Bain".
--> Macbeth allied with Thorfinn of Orkney, a Norseman. Thorfinn was the son of Sigurd the Fat and Bethoc, apparently the same Bethoc who was Duncan I's father. Thorfinn Sigurdsson is variously called "Thorfinn I", "Thorfinn II", "Thorfinn Skull-Smasher", "Thorfinn the Black", and "Thorfinn Raven-Feeder" (ravens eat dead meat, including human corpses). Thorfinn and Macbeth defeated and killed Duncan I in a battle in Elgin in August 1040. Thorfinn ruled northern Scotland, and Macbeth ruled southern Scotland. According to accounts, Macbeth was a good king, strict but fair, for the first decade of his reign.
In 1054, Earl Siward of Northumberland, who spirited Malcolm to England after Duncan's death, invaded Scotland. According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, he met and defeated Macbeth at the battle of Birnam Wood / Dunsinane (July 27). Most of Macbeth's army were killed, but Macbeth escaped. Siward's son and nephew were also killed. According to the Chronicles of Ulster, Macbeth continued to reign and was actually killed three years later by Duncan's son Malcolm. Thorfinn II survived until 1064.
After Macbeth's death, Lulach claimed the kingship and had some supporters. Lulach was ambushed and killed a few months later by Malcolm.
Malcolm went on to reign as Malcolm III "Canmore" ("big head" or "great ruler"). He took Thorfinn's widow Ingibiorg for himself, and they had a son Duncan, who later ruled as Duncan II. After Ingibiorg died, Malcolm Canmore married Margaret, a princess of the old English royal family. Margaret was a woman of great personal piety, and is now honored as a saint by Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Three of their sons became kings in their turns.
Malcolm Canmore was an aggressive and successful warrior who invaded England several times. He was finally killed in Northumberland. The story is that a treacherous soldier, pretending to hand him a key on a spear, put the spear through his eye socket.
Donald Bane, was king twice (deposed for a time by Duncan II, who he later defeated and killed). Donald Bane was finally defeated, imprisoned, and blinded by King Edgar, one of the sons of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret.
Unlucky for some
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=721201
It is said that there is a history of catastrophes, bad-luck, andunexplained incidents when the play is performed, and some actorsconsider it unlucky to refer to the play by name. They call Macbeth the ‘Scottish Play‘. This belief is still current among some actors.
There is no suggestion that the audience is in danger from thissuperstition.As to how this superstition arose is subject to debate. It is that said that the play of Macbeth with its witches, spells and incantations was nervously performed by Shakespeare’s actors, and that the fear that the play was cursed was confirmed when an actor by the name of Hal Berridge died while playing Lady Macbeth in 1606.
Some argue that the superstition was an invention of a later generation of actors. After this tragedy in 1606 it was reported that productions of the play suffered from various incidents. You can read a general accountof these in the article from the Austin Chronicle. Please note, however, that I have not researched each incident to see whether itindeed occurred. http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-10-13/arts_feature2.html
As I mentioned, the origin of this superstition is disputed and you may wish to read this short essay, ‘The early seventeenth-century Origin of the Macbeth Superstition’ by Gabriel Egan, Senior Lecturerin English at Loughborough University. The author ( and otheracademics) argue that there was no such actor as Hal erridge.
http://magpie.lboro.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2134/266/1/Macbeth_N+Q.pdf
You may also find this discussion on the Macbeth superstition of interest: ‘Angels and Ministers of Grace: Theatrical Superstitions Through the Ages’. The section on Macbeth starts two thirds of the way down the page at “Of course, the granddaddy of all theatrical superstitions” http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/theatricalSuperstitions2.html
This is yet another suggestion from The Stevenage Lytton Players at arecent production of Macbeth.“However, the ACTUAL reason for this fear is much more sensible, and rarely known by theatre peoples. The superstition actually began in the old days of stock companies, which would struggle at all times to remain in business. Frequently, near the end of a season a stock company would realise that it was not going to break even and, in an attempt to boost ticket sales and attendance, would announce production of a crowd favourite . . . Macbeth. If times were particularly bad, even 'the bard's play' would not be enough to save the company, therefore, Macbeth often presaged the end of a company's season, and would frequently be a portent of the company's demise. Therefore, the fear of Macbeth was generally the fear of bad business and of an entire company being put out of work." http://www.lyttonplayers.co.uk/Previous%20Productions/Macbeth/macbeth.htm.
Some modern actors still admit to the superstition. This is from an interview with Dominic Dromgoole who is the new artistic director ofthe Globe Theatre, “On the debit side, there are one or two loud pingson the luvvie-ometer (he actually admits that he still refers to Macbeth as “the Scottish Play”)”http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-2107901,00.html
Some, however, dismiss it. Royal Shakespeare Company director Dominic Cooke banned all actors from calling it “the Scottish play”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/coventry/stage/stories/2004/03/dominic-cooke-interview.shtml
Another take on this:
it's only unlucky if you say it in the theatre, either on stage, in the wings, backstage or in the dressing-rooms. it's otherwise referred to as "the scottish play".
It became an unlucky thing after a series of unfortunate events - fires, props malfunctioning, people hurting themselves by accident...
->August 7, 1606 (1st performance) – the boy who played Lady Macbeth died backstage
->1849 - 31 people were killed in a riot over the rivalry between actors Edwin Forrest and John Macready in front of the theatre where Macready played Macbeth
->1934 – in one week of performances at the Old Vic, four different Macbeths had to be used: one came down with laryngitis; one caught a chill; one was fired and the fourth one had to finish the run.
->1937 – During the Laurence Olivier-Judith Anderson production at the Old Vic, the following things happened: Lilian Baylis, founder of the theatre, learned that her favorite dog had died; the next day, Lilian Baylis herself succumbed; the director of the play nearly died in a taxi accident; Olivier was nearly hit with a stage sandbag; the scenery didn’t fit the stage; the musical composer kept tearing up his compositions and Olivier accidentally wounded the various Macduffs during the battle scenes.
->1954 – at another opening of the play, Lilian Baylis’ portrait fell off the wall and smashed into pieces
->The Stratford Festival’s 1938 season, which opened with Macbeth, was filled with bad luck: an old man had both of his legs broken when he was hit by his own car in the parking lot; Lady Macbeth ran her car into a store window; and Macduff had to be replaced by an understudy for several days after falling off his horse.
Above list from: http://www.thehipp.org/macbeth_perspectives.html copywhich also supplies a way to try to avert the curse when it is spoken aloud.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A78882
The Curse of the Play By Robert Faires
The lore surrounding Macbeth and its supernatural power begins with the play's creation in 1606. According to some, Shakespeare wrote the tragedy to ingratiate himself to King James I, who had succeeded Elizabeth I only a few years before. In addition to setting the play on James' home turf, Scotland, Will chose to give a nod to one of the monarch's pet subjects, demonology (James had written a book on the subject that became a popular tool for identifying witches in the 17th century).
Shakespeare incorporated a trio of spell-casting women into the drama and gave them a set of spooky incantations to recite. Alas, the story goes that the spells Will included in Macbeth were lifted from an authentic black-magic ritual and that their public display did not please the folks for whom these incantations were sacred. Therefore, they retaliated with a curse on the show and all its productions.
Those doing the cursing must have gotten an advance copy of the script or caught a rehearsal because legend has it that the play's infamous ill luck set in with its very first performance. John Aubrey, who supposedly knew some of the men who performed with Shakespeare in those days, has left us with the report that a boy named Hal Berridge was to play Lady Macbeth at the play's opening on August 7, 1606. Unfortunately, he was stricken with a sudden fever and died. It fell to the playwright himself to step into the role. It's been suggested that James was not that thrilled with the play, as it was not performed much in the century after. Whether or not that's the case, when it was performed, the results were often calamitous.
In a performance in Amsterdam in 1672, the actor in the title role is said to have used a real dagger for the scene in which he murders Duncan and done the deed for real. The play was revived in London in 1703, and on the day the production opened, England was hit with one of the most violent storms in its history.
As time wore on, the catastrophes associated with the play just kept piling up like Macbeth's victims.
At a performance of the play in 1721, a nobleman who was watching the show from the stage decided to get up in the middle of a scene, walk across the stage, and talk to a friend. The actors, upset by this, drew their swords and drove the nobleman and his friends from the theatre.
Unfortunately for them, the noblemen returned with the militia and burned the theatre down.
In 1775, Sarah Siddons took on the role of Lady Macbeth and was nearly ravaged by a disapproving audience.
It was Macbeth that was being performed inside the Astor Place Opera House the night of May 10, 1849, when a crowd of more than 10,000 New Yorkers gathered to protest the appearance of British actor William Charles Macready. (He was engaged in a bitter public feud with an American actor, Edwin Forrest.) The protest escalated into a riot, leading the militia to fire into the crowd. Twenty-three people were killed, 36 were wounded, and hundreds were injured.
And it was Macbeth that Abraham Lincoln chose to take with him on board the River Queen on the Potomac River on the afternoon of April 9, 1865. The president was reading passages aloud to a party of friends, passages which happened to follow the scene in which Duncan is assassinated. Within a week, Lincoln himself was dead by a murderer's hand.
In the last 135 years, the curse seems to have confined its mayhem to theatre people engaged in productions of the play. In 1882, on the closing night of one production, an actor named J. H. Barnes was engaged in a scene of swordplay with an actor named William Rignold when Barnes accidentally thrust his sword directly into Rignold's chest. Fortunately a doctor was in attendance, but the wound was supposedly rather serious.
In 1926, Sybil Thorndike was almost strangled by an actor. During the first modern-dress production at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1928, a large set fell down, injuring some members of the cast seriously, and a fire broke out in the dress circle.
In the early Thirties, theatrical grande dame Lillian Boylis took on the role of Lady Macbeth but died on the day of final dress rehearsal. Her portrait was hung in the theatre and some time later, when another production of the play was having its opening, the portrait fell from the wall.
In 1934, actor Malcolm Keen turned mute onstage, and his replacement, Alistair Sim, like Hal Berridge before him, developed a high fever and had to be hospitalized.
In 1936, when Orson Welles produced his "voodoo Macbeth," set in 19th-century Haiti, his cast included some African drummers and a genuine witch doctor who were not happy when critic Percy Hammond blasted the show. It is rumored that they placed a curse on him. Hammond died within a couple of weeks.
In 1937, a 30-year-old Laurence Olivier was rehearsing the play at the Old Vic when a 25-pound stage weight crashed down from the flies, missing him by inches. In addition, the director and the actress playing Lady Macduff were involved in a car accident on the way to the theatre, and the proprietor of the theatre died of a heart attack during the dress rehearsal.
In 1942, a production headed by John Gielgud suffered three deaths in the cast -- the actor playing Duncan and two of the actresses playing the Weird Sisters -- and the suicide of the costume and set designer.
In 1947, actor Harold Norman was stabbed in the swordfight that ends the play and died as a result of his wounds. His ghost is said to haunt the Colliseum Theatre in Oldham, where the fatal blow was struck. Supposedly, his spirit appears on Thursdays, the day he was killed.
In 1948, Diana Wynard was playing Lady Macbeth at Stratford and decided to play the sleepwalking scene with her eyes closed; on opening night, before a full audience, she walked right off the stage, falling 15 feet. Amazingly, she picked herself up and finished the show.
In 1953, Charlton Heston starred in an open-air production in Bermuda. On opening night, when the soldiers storming Macbeth's castle were to burn it to the ground onstage, the wind blew the smoke and flames into the audience, which ran away. Heston himself suffered severe burns in his groin and leg area from tights that were accidentally soaked in kerosene.
In 1955, Olivier was starring in the title role in a pioneering production at Stratford and during the big fight with Macduff almost blinded fellow actor Keith Michell.
In a production in St. Paul, Minnesota, the actor playing Macbeth dropped dead of heart failure during the first scene of Act III.
In 1988, the Broadway production starring Glenda Jackson and Christoper Plummer is supposed to have gone through three directors, five Macduffs, six cast changes, six stage managers, two set designers, two lighting designers, 26 bouts of flu, torn ligaments, and groin injuries. (The numbers vary in some reports.)
In 1998, in the Off-Broadway production starring Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett, Baldwin somehow sliced open the hand of his Macduff.
Add to these the long list of actors, from Lionel Barrymore in the 1920s to Kelsey Grammer just this year, who have attempted the play only to be savaged by critics as merciless as the Scottish lord himself.
To many theatre people, the curse extends beyond productions of the play itself. Simply saying the name of the play in a theatre invites disaster. (You're free to say it all you want outside theatres; the curse doesn't apply.)
The traditional way around this is to refer to the play by one of its many nicknames: "the Scottish Play," "the Scottish Tragedy," "the Scottish Business," "the Comedy of Glamis," "the Unmentionable," or just "That Play."
If you do happen to speak the unspeakable title while in a theatre, you are supposed to take immediate action to dispel the curse lest it bring ruin on whatever production is up or about to go up.
The most familiar way, as seen in the Ronald Harwood play and film The Dresser, is for the person who spoke the offending word to leave the room, turn around three times to the right, spit on the ground or over each shoulder, then knock on the door of the room and ask for permission to re-enter it. Variations involve leaving the theatre completely to perform the ritual and saying the foulest word you can think of before knocking and asking for permission to re-enter. Some say you can also banish the evils brought on by the curse simply by yelling a stream of obscenities or mumbling the phrase "Thrice around the circle bound, Evil sink into the ground." Or you can turn to Will himself for assistance and cleanse the air with a quotation from Hamlet: "Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Being with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou comest in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee."
Neither director of the current Austin productions has encountered the Macbeth curse personally, although Guy Roberts says that he did "produce a very bad version of the play when I was the artistic director of the Mermaid Theatre Company in New York. But in that case I think we were only cursed by our own inability."
Marshall Maresca says that when he was in the 1998 production of Julius Caesar at the Vortex, "Mick D'arcy and I would taunt the curse, call it on. Before the show, everyone would shake hands, say, 'Good show' or 'Break a leg' or the like. Mick and I would look right at each other and just say, 'Macbeth.'" For additional reference on the Macbeth curse, see Richard Huggett's Supernatural on Stage: Ghosts and Superstitions in the Theatre (NY, Taplinger, 1975).
It is said that there is a history of catastrophes, bad-luck, andunexplained incidents when the play is performed, and some actorsconsider it unlucky to refer to the play by name. They call Macbeth the ‘Scottish Play‘. This belief is still current among some actors.
There is no suggestion that the audience is in danger from thissuperstition.As to how this superstition arose is subject to debate. It is that said that the play of Macbeth with its witches, spells and incantations was nervously performed by Shakespeare’s actors, and that the fear that the play was cursed was confirmed when an actor by the name of Hal Berridge died while playing Lady Macbeth in 1606.
Some argue that the superstition was an invention of a later generation of actors. After this tragedy in 1606 it was reported that productions of the play suffered from various incidents. You can read a general accountof these in the article from the Austin Chronicle. Please note, however, that I have not researched each incident to see whether itindeed occurred. http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-10-13/arts_feature2.html
As I mentioned, the origin of this superstition is disputed and you may wish to read this short essay, ‘The early seventeenth-century Origin of the Macbeth Superstition’ by Gabriel Egan, Senior Lecturerin English at Loughborough University. The author ( and otheracademics) argue that there was no such actor as Hal erridge.
http://magpie.lboro.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2134/266/1/Macbeth_N+Q.pdf
You may also find this discussion on the Macbeth superstition of interest: ‘Angels and Ministers of Grace: Theatrical Superstitions Through the Ages’. The section on Macbeth starts two thirds of the way down the page at “Of course, the granddaddy of all theatrical superstitions” http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/theatricalSuperstitions2.html
This is yet another suggestion from The Stevenage Lytton Players at arecent production of Macbeth.“However, the ACTUAL reason for this fear is much more sensible, and rarely known by theatre peoples. The superstition actually began in the old days of stock companies, which would struggle at all times to remain in business. Frequently, near the end of a season a stock company would realise that it was not going to break even and, in an attempt to boost ticket sales and attendance, would announce production of a crowd favourite . . . Macbeth. If times were particularly bad, even 'the bard's play' would not be enough to save the company, therefore, Macbeth often presaged the end of a company's season, and would frequently be a portent of the company's demise. Therefore, the fear of Macbeth was generally the fear of bad business and of an entire company being put out of work." http://www.lyttonplayers.co.uk/Previous%20Productions/Macbeth/macbeth.htm.
Some modern actors still admit to the superstition. This is from an interview with Dominic Dromgoole who is the new artistic director ofthe Globe Theatre, “On the debit side, there are one or two loud pingson the luvvie-ometer (he actually admits that he still refers to Macbeth as “the Scottish Play”)”http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-2107901,00.html
Some, however, dismiss it. Royal Shakespeare Company director Dominic Cooke banned all actors from calling it “the Scottish play”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/coventry/stage/stories/2004/03/dominic-cooke-interview.shtml
Another take on this:
it's only unlucky if you say it in the theatre, either on stage, in the wings, backstage or in the dressing-rooms. it's otherwise referred to as "the scottish play".
It became an unlucky thing after a series of unfortunate events - fires, props malfunctioning, people hurting themselves by accident...
->August 7, 1606 (1st performance) – the boy who played Lady Macbeth died backstage
->1849 - 31 people were killed in a riot over the rivalry between actors Edwin Forrest and John Macready in front of the theatre where Macready played Macbeth
->1934 – in one week of performances at the Old Vic, four different Macbeths had to be used: one came down with laryngitis; one caught a chill; one was fired and the fourth one had to finish the run.
->1937 – During the Laurence Olivier-Judith Anderson production at the Old Vic, the following things happened: Lilian Baylis, founder of the theatre, learned that her favorite dog had died; the next day, Lilian Baylis herself succumbed; the director of the play nearly died in a taxi accident; Olivier was nearly hit with a stage sandbag; the scenery didn’t fit the stage; the musical composer kept tearing up his compositions and Olivier accidentally wounded the various Macduffs during the battle scenes.
->1954 – at another opening of the play, Lilian Baylis’ portrait fell off the wall and smashed into pieces
->The Stratford Festival’s 1938 season, which opened with Macbeth, was filled with bad luck: an old man had both of his legs broken when he was hit by his own car in the parking lot; Lady Macbeth ran her car into a store window; and Macduff had to be replaced by an understudy for several days after falling off his horse.
Above list from: http://www.thehipp.org/macbeth_perspectives.html copywhich also supplies a way to try to avert the curse when it is spoken aloud.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A78882
The Curse of the Play By Robert Faires
The lore surrounding Macbeth and its supernatural power begins with the play's creation in 1606. According to some, Shakespeare wrote the tragedy to ingratiate himself to King James I, who had succeeded Elizabeth I only a few years before. In addition to setting the play on James' home turf, Scotland, Will chose to give a nod to one of the monarch's pet subjects, demonology (James had written a book on the subject that became a popular tool for identifying witches in the 17th century).
Shakespeare incorporated a trio of spell-casting women into the drama and gave them a set of spooky incantations to recite. Alas, the story goes that the spells Will included in Macbeth were lifted from an authentic black-magic ritual and that their public display did not please the folks for whom these incantations were sacred. Therefore, they retaliated with a curse on the show and all its productions.
Those doing the cursing must have gotten an advance copy of the script or caught a rehearsal because legend has it that the play's infamous ill luck set in with its very first performance. John Aubrey, who supposedly knew some of the men who performed with Shakespeare in those days, has left us with the report that a boy named Hal Berridge was to play Lady Macbeth at the play's opening on August 7, 1606. Unfortunately, he was stricken with a sudden fever and died. It fell to the playwright himself to step into the role. It's been suggested that James was not that thrilled with the play, as it was not performed much in the century after. Whether or not that's the case, when it was performed, the results were often calamitous.
In a performance in Amsterdam in 1672, the actor in the title role is said to have used a real dagger for the scene in which he murders Duncan and done the deed for real. The play was revived in London in 1703, and on the day the production opened, England was hit with one of the most violent storms in its history.
As time wore on, the catastrophes associated with the play just kept piling up like Macbeth's victims.
At a performance of the play in 1721, a nobleman who was watching the show from the stage decided to get up in the middle of a scene, walk across the stage, and talk to a friend. The actors, upset by this, drew their swords and drove the nobleman and his friends from the theatre.
Unfortunately for them, the noblemen returned with the militia and burned the theatre down.
In 1775, Sarah Siddons took on the role of Lady Macbeth and was nearly ravaged by a disapproving audience.
It was Macbeth that was being performed inside the Astor Place Opera House the night of May 10, 1849, when a crowd of more than 10,000 New Yorkers gathered to protest the appearance of British actor William Charles Macready. (He was engaged in a bitter public feud with an American actor, Edwin Forrest.) The protest escalated into a riot, leading the militia to fire into the crowd. Twenty-three people were killed, 36 were wounded, and hundreds were injured.
And it was Macbeth that Abraham Lincoln chose to take with him on board the River Queen on the Potomac River on the afternoon of April 9, 1865. The president was reading passages aloud to a party of friends, passages which happened to follow the scene in which Duncan is assassinated. Within a week, Lincoln himself was dead by a murderer's hand.
In the last 135 years, the curse seems to have confined its mayhem to theatre people engaged in productions of the play. In 1882, on the closing night of one production, an actor named J. H. Barnes was engaged in a scene of swordplay with an actor named William Rignold when Barnes accidentally thrust his sword directly into Rignold's chest. Fortunately a doctor was in attendance, but the wound was supposedly rather serious.
In 1926, Sybil Thorndike was almost strangled by an actor. During the first modern-dress production at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1928, a large set fell down, injuring some members of the cast seriously, and a fire broke out in the dress circle.
In the early Thirties, theatrical grande dame Lillian Boylis took on the role of Lady Macbeth but died on the day of final dress rehearsal. Her portrait was hung in the theatre and some time later, when another production of the play was having its opening, the portrait fell from the wall.
In 1934, actor Malcolm Keen turned mute onstage, and his replacement, Alistair Sim, like Hal Berridge before him, developed a high fever and had to be hospitalized.
In 1936, when Orson Welles produced his "voodoo Macbeth," set in 19th-century Haiti, his cast included some African drummers and a genuine witch doctor who were not happy when critic Percy Hammond blasted the show. It is rumored that they placed a curse on him. Hammond died within a couple of weeks.
In 1937, a 30-year-old Laurence Olivier was rehearsing the play at the Old Vic when a 25-pound stage weight crashed down from the flies, missing him by inches. In addition, the director and the actress playing Lady Macduff were involved in a car accident on the way to the theatre, and the proprietor of the theatre died of a heart attack during the dress rehearsal.
In 1942, a production headed by John Gielgud suffered three deaths in the cast -- the actor playing Duncan and two of the actresses playing the Weird Sisters -- and the suicide of the costume and set designer.
In 1947, actor Harold Norman was stabbed in the swordfight that ends the play and died as a result of his wounds. His ghost is said to haunt the Colliseum Theatre in Oldham, where the fatal blow was struck. Supposedly, his spirit appears on Thursdays, the day he was killed.
In 1948, Diana Wynard was playing Lady Macbeth at Stratford and decided to play the sleepwalking scene with her eyes closed; on opening night, before a full audience, she walked right off the stage, falling 15 feet. Amazingly, she picked herself up and finished the show.
In 1953, Charlton Heston starred in an open-air production in Bermuda. On opening night, when the soldiers storming Macbeth's castle were to burn it to the ground onstage, the wind blew the smoke and flames into the audience, which ran away. Heston himself suffered severe burns in his groin and leg area from tights that were accidentally soaked in kerosene.
In 1955, Olivier was starring in the title role in a pioneering production at Stratford and during the big fight with Macduff almost blinded fellow actor Keith Michell.
In a production in St. Paul, Minnesota, the actor playing Macbeth dropped dead of heart failure during the first scene of Act III.
In 1988, the Broadway production starring Glenda Jackson and Christoper Plummer is supposed to have gone through three directors, five Macduffs, six cast changes, six stage managers, two set designers, two lighting designers, 26 bouts of flu, torn ligaments, and groin injuries. (The numbers vary in some reports.)
In 1998, in the Off-Broadway production starring Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett, Baldwin somehow sliced open the hand of his Macduff.
Add to these the long list of actors, from Lionel Barrymore in the 1920s to Kelsey Grammer just this year, who have attempted the play only to be savaged by critics as merciless as the Scottish lord himself.
To many theatre people, the curse extends beyond productions of the play itself. Simply saying the name of the play in a theatre invites disaster. (You're free to say it all you want outside theatres; the curse doesn't apply.)
The traditional way around this is to refer to the play by one of its many nicknames: "the Scottish Play," "the Scottish Tragedy," "the Scottish Business," "the Comedy of Glamis," "the Unmentionable," or just "That Play."
If you do happen to speak the unspeakable title while in a theatre, you are supposed to take immediate action to dispel the curse lest it bring ruin on whatever production is up or about to go up.
The most familiar way, as seen in the Ronald Harwood play and film The Dresser, is for the person who spoke the offending word to leave the room, turn around three times to the right, spit on the ground or over each shoulder, then knock on the door of the room and ask for permission to re-enter it. Variations involve leaving the theatre completely to perform the ritual and saying the foulest word you can think of before knocking and asking for permission to re-enter. Some say you can also banish the evils brought on by the curse simply by yelling a stream of obscenities or mumbling the phrase "Thrice around the circle bound, Evil sink into the ground." Or you can turn to Will himself for assistance and cleanse the air with a quotation from Hamlet: "Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Being with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou comest in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee."
Neither director of the current Austin productions has encountered the Macbeth curse personally, although Guy Roberts says that he did "produce a very bad version of the play when I was the artistic director of the Mermaid Theatre Company in New York. But in that case I think we were only cursed by our own inability."
Marshall Maresca says that when he was in the 1998 production of Julius Caesar at the Vortex, "Mick D'arcy and I would taunt the curse, call it on. Before the show, everyone would shake hands, say, 'Good show' or 'Break a leg' or the like. Mick and I would look right at each other and just say, 'Macbeth.'" For additional reference on the Macbeth curse, see Richard Huggett's Supernatural on Stage: Ghosts and Superstitions in the Theatre (NY, Taplinger, 1975).
24 March 2008
Theatre Ghost
Oh and Elmwood Auditorium is haunted. Well so some say. I think it adds to our production myself, but it may freak out some of the actors.
23 March 2008
Some images of Macbeth
Ian McKellan and Judi Dench. A great poster. Patrick Stewart as Macbeth.
We need to come back to the age of the Macbeths.
Odd productions of Macbeth #1 - no witches
I posted this some time ago but it seems to have gotten lost.... I have heard of productions without the witches - including one cut down production with no magic at all, this however is amusing. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE1DD1F3FF934A1575AC0A967958260
Review/Theater; 'Macbeth' Without Witchcraft
By MEL GUSSOW
Published: September 27, 1991
Foul is fair in Gus Kaikkonen's vaguely updated version of "Macbeth" for the Riverside Shakespeare Company. The three witches have been transformed into attractive, nun-like Army nurses who begin the play by ministrating to the needs of wounded soldiers in a World War I field hospital. This is a confusing overlapping of the first and second scenes of the play.
Later the unweird sisters appear in Macbeth's nightmare, hovering around his bed along with a ubiquitous doctor to give him a shot of an unknown substance. In other words, in this quasi-interpretation, drugs may be the cause or the aftermath of Macbeth's mania. There is no cauldron in sight, no witches' brew, thunder or mystery. There is not much of a "Macbeth" on this stage, despite Stephen McHattie's performance in the title role.
In this troublesome approach, Lady Macbeth (Jennifer Harmon) is not a malevolent presence. Her sleepwalking scene is so mild, in fact, that it would not wake the neighbors. Almost everything is played out under bright lights, which vitiates the feeling of menace. Some of the doubling in roles is distracting. One witch, for example, also plays Lady Macduff, and King Duncan is also the Porter.
One distinct problem is the choice of military hardware. Some of the soldiers carry rifles, others have swords. Several, obviously low in rank, march into battle with small shovels. They look like garden tools, suitable for potted plants. A spade is a spade for all that, and theatergoers should have no doubt which characters will be the losers.
Though warned about the walking woods, Macbeth is surprised by a small band of soldiers carrying tiny twigs, what might be considered the bonsai version of Birnam. There are bigger boughs at any nearby sidewalk florist than there are onstage at Playhouse 91. The purpose may be thrift, but the result is overly spartan.
Behind all this cavalier conceptualization, there are a few defensible aspects to the Riverside "Macbeth," including Bob Barnett's useful, Japanese-style set. Mr. McHattie is a forthright Macbeth and is clearly capable of performing the role in a more faithful production. He is evenly matched by Richard McWilliams as Macduff. Their duel is the sharpest moment in the evening.
Earlier, Mr. McWilliams is victimized by one of Mr. Kaikkonen's more ill-conceived notions. When Macduff seeks out Malcolm to convince him to return to Scotland, he finds him lolling on a blanket with a lady friend. The couple look and sound like figures from an Oscar Wilde comedy. The lady, who does not exist as a character in Shakespeare, suddenly becomes Malcolm's protector and draws a pistol on Macduff, demanding that he lay off Malcolm. At this and other points, a theatergoer might be justified in borrowing Macbeth's final words: "Hold, enough!" Macbeth By William Shakespeare
Review/Theater; 'Macbeth' Without Witchcraft
By MEL GUSSOW
Published: September 27, 1991
Foul is fair in Gus Kaikkonen's vaguely updated version of "Macbeth" for the Riverside Shakespeare Company. The three witches have been transformed into attractive, nun-like Army nurses who begin the play by ministrating to the needs of wounded soldiers in a World War I field hospital. This is a confusing overlapping of the first and second scenes of the play.
Later the unweird sisters appear in Macbeth's nightmare, hovering around his bed along with a ubiquitous doctor to give him a shot of an unknown substance. In other words, in this quasi-interpretation, drugs may be the cause or the aftermath of Macbeth's mania. There is no cauldron in sight, no witches' brew, thunder or mystery. There is not much of a "Macbeth" on this stage, despite Stephen McHattie's performance in the title role.
In this troublesome approach, Lady Macbeth (Jennifer Harmon) is not a malevolent presence. Her sleepwalking scene is so mild, in fact, that it would not wake the neighbors. Almost everything is played out under bright lights, which vitiates the feeling of menace. Some of the doubling in roles is distracting. One witch, for example, also plays Lady Macduff, and King Duncan is also the Porter.
One distinct problem is the choice of military hardware. Some of the soldiers carry rifles, others have swords. Several, obviously low in rank, march into battle with small shovels. They look like garden tools, suitable for potted plants. A spade is a spade for all that, and theatergoers should have no doubt which characters will be the losers.
Though warned about the walking woods, Macbeth is surprised by a small band of soldiers carrying tiny twigs, what might be considered the bonsai version of Birnam. There are bigger boughs at any nearby sidewalk florist than there are onstage at Playhouse 91. The purpose may be thrift, but the result is overly spartan.
Behind all this cavalier conceptualization, there are a few defensible aspects to the Riverside "Macbeth," including Bob Barnett's useful, Japanese-style set. Mr. McHattie is a forthright Macbeth and is clearly capable of performing the role in a more faithful production. He is evenly matched by Richard McWilliams as Macduff. Their duel is the sharpest moment in the evening.
Earlier, Mr. McWilliams is victimized by one of Mr. Kaikkonen's more ill-conceived notions. When Macduff seeks out Malcolm to convince him to return to Scotland, he finds him lolling on a blanket with a lady friend. The couple look and sound like figures from an Oscar Wilde comedy. The lady, who does not exist as a character in Shakespeare, suddenly becomes Malcolm's protector and draws a pistol on Macduff, demanding that he lay off Malcolm. At this and other points, a theatergoer might be justified in borrowing Macbeth's final words: "Hold, enough!" Macbeth By William Shakespeare
Odd productions of Macbeth # 2 - silent
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/theater/9057/the-pretentious-festival
Strip Macbeth of its language and you’re left with a fairly banal story about one man’s murderous ambition, fodder for a silent film in which creepy organ music plays in the background. This is the sort of old-fashioned entertainment that director (and TONY contributor) Jeff Lewonczyk and his actors, aided by sound designer Ryan Holsopple, serve up in Macbeth Without Words
Strip Macbeth of its language and you’re left with a fairly banal story about one man’s murderous ambition, fodder for a silent film in which creepy organ music plays in the background. This is the sort of old-fashioned entertainment that director (and TONY contributor) Jeff Lewonczyk and his actors, aided by sound designer Ryan Holsopple, serve up in Macbeth Without Words
22 March 2008
A take on Lady Macbeth by a US actress
Some great stuff in this thesis - And while I don't agree with much of it, there is useful background and it oulines many of the key decisions needed to make it real. I've only put in the first part.
What I very pleased is that Tara has so generously made this excellent resource available for everyone.
http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04132005-093708/unrestricted/MacMullen_thesis.pdf
THE ROLE OF LADY MACBETH
IN SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH:
A PRODUCTION THESIS IN ACTING by Tara MaMullen (see her on imdb.com - she's working!)
The role of Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth was selected as a thesis project in the fall semester of 2004. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a written record of the actor’s interpretation and creation of the character through the rehearsal process. It contains five parts: an introduction, a character analysis, a daily actor’s journal, a physical score, and a conclusion.
The character of Lady Macbeth is one of the most confusing and intriguing in all of Shakespeare’s works. No definitive Lady “M” has been agreed upon. Directors and actors cannot even agree as to whether or not she is a prominent character, as she disappears after the banquet scene not to reappear until the infamous sleepwalking scene.
In this analysis of the role of Lady Macbeth, the focus is first on historical and critical views of Lady Macbeth.
Three versions of Lady Macbeth have been considered notable since John Rice originated the role opposite Richard Burbage in 1606. These actresses are Sarah Siddons, Ellen Terry, and Judi Dench. The interpretations and the possible textual basis for the choices follow.
In 1785 Sarah Siddons played Lady M to her brother John Kemble’s Macbeth. Siddons was said to have been the only woman who could ever play this role. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, very tall and statuesque. The 18th century Shakespeare scholar William Hazlitt said of Siddons, “We can conceive of nothing grander. It seemed almost as if a being of superior order had been dropped from higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated in her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. She was tragedy personified.”
Siddons choice made Lady Macbeth a ruthlessly ambitious woman who dominated her husband. Her brother’s Macbeth was said to have been in a constant state of blindly rushing towards and from his ambitions. Siddons countered this by being absolutely firm and even masculine in her desires. She became the strongest of the pair.
Hazlitt said, “She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear more than we hate.” This fear came from her utter steadiness. Textual basis for this choice could come from any of the following pieces of text:
Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear
And chastise with the valor of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal.
(1.5. 28—33)
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty.
(1.5.47—50)
Leave all the rest to me.
(1.6.86)
Infirm of purpose.
Give me the daggers.
(2.2.68—69)
What beast was ’t then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man.
(1.7.53—58)
Are you a man?
(3.4.70)
Lady Macbeth seems to know that she will need to coax him into performing the murder of Duncan; and she is right. The choice can be made that she has taken the position as leader of the clan. She decides what needs to be done and she “chastise[s] with the valor of her tongue” every fear and doubt Macbeth has about performing that deed. The choices made by Siddons of masculinity and steadiness seem to be found in Lady Macbeth’s famous “unsex me” speech. She demands the forces of evil to neuter her, to free her of gender, and the frailty of womanhood. Lady Macbeth, often, in the script, takes charge of the situation. Siddons read this to mean Lady Macbeth was in charge at all times. She chose to make Lady Macbeth the dominant figure in the
relationship. More evidence for Lady M’s dominance may come from her constant questioning of Macbeth’s manhood. It is the strike she makes most often to push him into action. Macbeth falls for it every time. Again, it seems as though Siddons chose to believe that it is a constant part of their relationship.
I find the trouble with these choices to be many. If she is in fact the strength, the man, in the relationship, why does she ask spirits for resolve and strength? Why does she not perform the murder herself? And the biggest flaw I find is in the famous sleepwalking scene. She ends Act 3 scene 4 by sending Macbeth to bed. This action is clearly not the problem; she is still domineering, still the stronger partner. She then disappears for almost two full acts. We hear little of her and when she re-enters she has lost her mind. The audience can infer that she has been overcome by guilt or the need for secrecy, or that her relationship with the devil himself has become too much. This strong woman falls too far by Act V scene ii without any explanation. In my mind, Shakespeare would not have left us with a pillar of strength returning once more as a woman unloosed without taking the opportunity to tell us how. It seems as if we would need some show of weakness from the strong Lady for us to believe she could end up here.
The next famous incarnation of Lady Macbeth was performed by Ellen Terry in 1888, opposite Henry Irving. Ms. Terry is considered the first woman to break from the long standing interpretation of Lady Macbeth as set by Sarah Siddons, creating a very new and very controversial Lady M. Twentieth century film historian, Roger Manvell, author of Ellen Terry’s biography called her Lady M “humane and penetrating.” He said, “Love blinds her to all else but the fulfillment of her wishes and thus she allies herself to the spirits of evil ‘to prick the sides’ of his intent and help him to happiness.” And Garry Wills in Witches and Jesuits calls Terry a “pre-Raphaelite spectre who dooms [Macbeth] with her beauty.” As a Victorian sex symbol, Ms. Terry inspired John Singer Sargent to paint his version of Lady Macbeth with long plaits of floor length red hair holding a crown high above her head as if she were crowning herself.
Terry sought to understand Lady Macbeth more fully and wrote William Winter, an important American critic and friend, asking for assistance. She said, “Everyone seems to think MrsMcB is a monstrosity—and I can only see that she’s a woman—A mistaken woman-& weak- not a Dove- of course not- but first of all a wife.” (The emphases are Ms. Terry’s.) Not just a wife, but a good wife who struggles with and for her husband. She sees not only her own weaknesses, but she believes to see his as well.
Her new understanding of Lady M was still scheming and ambitious, but very feminine (in her own notes she underlines “very” and “feminine” double and triple times). Terry chose to be a devoted wife who did not know her husband well enough to see the evil that existed inside of him. Quite aware of her own weaknesses, she calls for help in the famous “unsexing” speech.
Terry made the choice that Lady M’s faint in Act II scene iii must be real. She says, “Strung up at first she relaxes when all seems safe and they swallow her husband’s masterly excuse.” Though many scholars believe the faint is to take focus off of Macbeth’s murder of the grooms, Terry’s choice was that Lady M has an emotional release; and in exhaustion, faints. This faint allowed the audience to believe more freely that Lady M, unlike in Ms. Siddons’ performance, has some touch of frailty that could grow into the hysteria seen later.
Some clues from the text which lead to the interpretation of a loving and devoted wife are:
Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it.
(1.5.18—19)
Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire?
(1.7.43—45)
Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength to think
So brainsickly of things.
(2.2.58—60)
I pray you, speak not. He grows worse and worse.
Question enrages him. At once, good night.
(3.4.144—145)
These references show a Lady Macbeth who cares deeply about her husband and sees not only his strength but some of his weaknesses as well (i.e. “without the illness” and “art thou afeard.”) She is concerned with his well-being (“you do unbend your noble strength”) and with his public personae (“Question enrages him.”) The text Ms. Terry may have focused on could lead to a woman who sees the struggle her husband is about to undertake. I do evidence that she has weaknesses. She says in Act II scene ii lines
11—12, “Had he not resembled my father… I had done’t.” I agree that it is a mistake to
not make their love very real. My problems are again many.
Ms. Terry was extremely worried about the audience liking her. Because of this she found a new level to Lady M that is often overlooked by actresses, but I think by making her ambition only for her husband she becomes less interesting. How many people are giving enough to kill a king in their home? And would Shakespeare write a woman so loving that she calls on demons and loses her mind? I believe also that playing so much on her frailty discounts all of the strength she does possess. She challenges his manhood. Is this the act of a loving and devoted wife who wants only for her husband’s happiness? Does the promise of bashing the brains out of a child come from a frail woman who is blinded by love of her husband? Terry gives us a side of Lady M that
seemed lacking in Siddons’ interpretation, but by pushing her too far in the other direction Terry undermines what is clearly written by Shakespeare. He gives us a woman who begs for cruelty and then uses it against the man she loves. She is a woman whose desire for power leads her to plot a murder of a king in her own home. Terry’s view, though valid in many ways, erases the complexities of Lady Macbeth that intrigue the audience.
In 1978, Dame Judi Dench played Lady Macbeth opposite Ian McKellen. Her most notable choice was to be Macbeth’s equal. She neither dominated him nor submitted to him. And like many Lady M’s before she clearly loved Macbeth. Critics have said of her RSC performance, Dench transforms “from cold, malevolent she-devil to sadly broken, guilt-ridden madwoman.” While calling upon evil forces to come to her aid she shows a little bit of humanity by getting frightened of what she is asking. Ms. Dench’s Lady M has been called a “barometer of guilt.” Macbeth’s (as well as her own guilt) are played out more in her actions than in those of her husband. She inhabited the choice that they are in this deed together.
Some textual references to this choice are:
Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is to full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.
(1.5.16—18)
But screw your courage to the sticking place
And we’ll not fail.
(1.7.70—71)
A little water clears us of this deed.
(2.2.86)
As his equal she is able to see what he may be unwilling to do, she steadies herself to be his support. Dench may have latched on to Lady M’s references to “us” and “we.” After the deed is put into motion, she speaks in terms of their togetherness. Lines such as, “These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so it will make us mad (2.2.37—38),” and the previously mentioned, “A little water clears us of this deed.”
My problem with Dame Dench’s choice is that she didn’t seem to use Lady Macbeth’s ambition as fully as it seems to exist in the text. She wants power. She does love her husband very much and is willing to help him, but when he refuses to go any further her desire for the throne wins over her love for her husband. She forces him to go through with the murder. She chides him and calls his manhood into question. She does not say to him, “Honey, I love you, and if you think it is best to back down, I’m with you.” She tells him to buck up and give her what he promised her. She certainly wants him there. He is not just a means to an end. But she will not let him break his promise.
She wants to be in power. They are equals, I think Dench is right in that choice, but she is adamant about one thing and that is becoming queen. The next bit of research I obtained is the critical analysis of Lady Macbeth made by several Shakespeare scholars. My main resources were Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human and Jan Kott’s Shakespeare Our Contemporary. I also pulled from dramaturgical references to Holinshed’s Chronicle and stories of the historical Macbeth.
Harold Bloom in The Invention of the Human brings up idea that informed and even translated directly into the creation of my Lady Macbeth. One common idea he presents is that Macbeth is her second husband. He claims that Macbeth is dependent on Lady Macbeth. I do believe that in many ways he is dependent. He comes to her first with the witches’ promise. He is lead by her insistence of their steps to power. His dependence on her also allows for a greater sense of loss for Lady M when he starts to exclude her from plans. If, after the murder, he no longer needs her, the steps to her decline seem clear. She has gone from his trusted, needed advisor to a wife who is purposefully being left out. Bloom refers to Lady Macbeth as “pure will.” The lack of will that Macbeth seems to have succumbed to is what makes Lady M so necessary to him, particularly early on. She lets her desire to be queen drive her and her husband to regicide in her home. It seems that Macbeth could not have gotten to that point by himself. He says that he had been honored and it wasn’t yet time to give up those honors, even though she is suggesting greater honors. The main ideas I took away from my reading included that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are the happiest couple in all of Shakespeare. He calls them, “…persuasive and valuable personalities, profoundly in love with each other.” This statement particularly informed my choices for Lady Macbeth. In this case, the idea that they loved each other seemed more useful than the idea that she was a mother figure for Macbeth, or that she needed him to achieve her political goals, or that it was a lust/sex based relationship. That being said, I do believe there are clear moments when each of these ideas are present. She has to scold him at times for being afraid and for getting upset. She does send him to bed, like a mother, after the disastrous banquet. Her need for Macbeth as her way into power is obvious in that she cannot gain power as a woman without a man. She needs to be married to man who can get her to the top. I believe she got lucky with a powerful man whom she also deeply loves. The idea of them as a sexual couple will lead me into the next author whose work influenced my choices for Lady Macbeth, Jan Kott.
In Shakespeare Our Contemporary, particularly the chapter entitled “Macbeth, or Death-Infected,” Jan Kott discusses a Lady Macbeth who is the man in the relationship. He sees her charge to murder as “…a confirmation of manhood, an act of love.” Kott talks about two people who are “sexually obsessed with each other” but who have suffered a “great erotic defeat.” While I do not know what textual evidence he has for this, besides the strong sexual language of their first meeting and the constant attacks on Macbeth’s manhood, I think the idea is a usable one. I put to use the idea that Lady Macbeth finds some kind of sensual gratification in the enacting of this murder. Also, I thought of times where Lady M does step up and become the “man.” She often puts herself in the position of power, telling Macbeth to “leave the all the rest to me,” manipulating him into agreeing to murder when he is clearly against it. On the other hand, I think there are times that she is just as obviously the devoted wife—she is the hostess and the first face for the guests to see, uses her womanhood against him just as easily as she challenges his masculinity, “I have given suck…”
The historical Lady Macbeth is a woman named Gruoch—Scottish women didn’t actually take the name of their husbands. It is known that this woman had a son by a first marriage. Unlike in Shakespeare’s telling, this son lived to adulthood and actually held the throne for a short period of time before being killed. The real “Lady Macbeth” killed her first husband. Gruoch actually had a claim to the throne, or she would have if she were a man. She was the granddaughter of King Kenneth III (a direct descendant of Kenneth MacAlpine the first king of the Scots) which would, if she were a male, have given the same right to the throne as Duncan and Macbeth.
What I very pleased is that Tara has so generously made this excellent resource available for everyone.
http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04132005-093708/unrestricted/MacMullen_thesis.pdf
THE ROLE OF LADY MACBETH
IN SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH:
A PRODUCTION THESIS IN ACTING by Tara MaMullen (see her on imdb.com - she's working!)
The role of Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth was selected as a thesis project in the fall semester of 2004. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a written record of the actor’s interpretation and creation of the character through the rehearsal process. It contains five parts: an introduction, a character analysis, a daily actor’s journal, a physical score, and a conclusion.
The character of Lady Macbeth is one of the most confusing and intriguing in all of Shakespeare’s works. No definitive Lady “M” has been agreed upon. Directors and actors cannot even agree as to whether or not she is a prominent character, as she disappears after the banquet scene not to reappear until the infamous sleepwalking scene.
In this analysis of the role of Lady Macbeth, the focus is first on historical and critical views of Lady Macbeth.
Three versions of Lady Macbeth have been considered notable since John Rice originated the role opposite Richard Burbage in 1606. These actresses are Sarah Siddons, Ellen Terry, and Judi Dench. The interpretations and the possible textual basis for the choices follow.
In 1785 Sarah Siddons played Lady M to her brother John Kemble’s Macbeth. Siddons was said to have been the only woman who could ever play this role. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, very tall and statuesque. The 18th century Shakespeare scholar William Hazlitt said of Siddons, “We can conceive of nothing grander. It seemed almost as if a being of superior order had been dropped from higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated in her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. She was tragedy personified.”
Siddons choice made Lady Macbeth a ruthlessly ambitious woman who dominated her husband. Her brother’s Macbeth was said to have been in a constant state of blindly rushing towards and from his ambitions. Siddons countered this by being absolutely firm and even masculine in her desires. She became the strongest of the pair.
Hazlitt said, “She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear more than we hate.” This fear came from her utter steadiness. Textual basis for this choice could come from any of the following pieces of text:
Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear
And chastise with the valor of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal.
(1.5. 28—33)
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty.
(1.5.47—50)
Leave all the rest to me.
(1.6.86)
Infirm of purpose.
Give me the daggers.
(2.2.68—69)
What beast was ’t then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man.
(1.7.53—58)
Are you a man?
(3.4.70)
Lady Macbeth seems to know that she will need to coax him into performing the murder of Duncan; and she is right. The choice can be made that she has taken the position as leader of the clan. She decides what needs to be done and she “chastise[s] with the valor of her tongue” every fear and doubt Macbeth has about performing that deed. The choices made by Siddons of masculinity and steadiness seem to be found in Lady Macbeth’s famous “unsex me” speech. She demands the forces of evil to neuter her, to free her of gender, and the frailty of womanhood. Lady Macbeth, often, in the script, takes charge of the situation. Siddons read this to mean Lady Macbeth was in charge at all times. She chose to make Lady Macbeth the dominant figure in the
relationship. More evidence for Lady M’s dominance may come from her constant questioning of Macbeth’s manhood. It is the strike she makes most often to push him into action. Macbeth falls for it every time. Again, it seems as though Siddons chose to believe that it is a constant part of their relationship.
I find the trouble with these choices to be many. If she is in fact the strength, the man, in the relationship, why does she ask spirits for resolve and strength? Why does she not perform the murder herself? And the biggest flaw I find is in the famous sleepwalking scene. She ends Act 3 scene 4 by sending Macbeth to bed. This action is clearly not the problem; she is still domineering, still the stronger partner. She then disappears for almost two full acts. We hear little of her and when she re-enters she has lost her mind. The audience can infer that she has been overcome by guilt or the need for secrecy, or that her relationship with the devil himself has become too much. This strong woman falls too far by Act V scene ii without any explanation. In my mind, Shakespeare would not have left us with a pillar of strength returning once more as a woman unloosed without taking the opportunity to tell us how. It seems as if we would need some show of weakness from the strong Lady for us to believe she could end up here.
The next famous incarnation of Lady Macbeth was performed by Ellen Terry in 1888, opposite Henry Irving. Ms. Terry is considered the first woman to break from the long standing interpretation of Lady Macbeth as set by Sarah Siddons, creating a very new and very controversial Lady M. Twentieth century film historian, Roger Manvell, author of Ellen Terry’s biography called her Lady M “humane and penetrating.” He said, “Love blinds her to all else but the fulfillment of her wishes and thus she allies herself to the spirits of evil ‘to prick the sides’ of his intent and help him to happiness.” And Garry Wills in Witches and Jesuits calls Terry a “pre-Raphaelite spectre who dooms [Macbeth] with her beauty.” As a Victorian sex symbol, Ms. Terry inspired John Singer Sargent to paint his version of Lady Macbeth with long plaits of floor length red hair holding a crown high above her head as if she were crowning herself.
Terry sought to understand Lady Macbeth more fully and wrote William Winter, an important American critic and friend, asking for assistance. She said, “Everyone seems to think MrsMcB is a monstrosity—and I can only see that she’s a woman—A mistaken woman-& weak- not a Dove- of course not- but first of all a wife.” (The emphases are Ms. Terry’s.) Not just a wife, but a good wife who struggles with and for her husband. She sees not only her own weaknesses, but she believes to see his as well.
Her new understanding of Lady M was still scheming and ambitious, but very feminine (in her own notes she underlines “very” and “feminine” double and triple times). Terry chose to be a devoted wife who did not know her husband well enough to see the evil that existed inside of him. Quite aware of her own weaknesses, she calls for help in the famous “unsexing” speech.
Terry made the choice that Lady M’s faint in Act II scene iii must be real. She says, “Strung up at first she relaxes when all seems safe and they swallow her husband’s masterly excuse.” Though many scholars believe the faint is to take focus off of Macbeth’s murder of the grooms, Terry’s choice was that Lady M has an emotional release; and in exhaustion, faints. This faint allowed the audience to believe more freely that Lady M, unlike in Ms. Siddons’ performance, has some touch of frailty that could grow into the hysteria seen later.
Some clues from the text which lead to the interpretation of a loving and devoted wife are:
Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it.
(1.5.18—19)
Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire?
(1.7.43—45)
Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength to think
So brainsickly of things.
(2.2.58—60)
I pray you, speak not. He grows worse and worse.
Question enrages him. At once, good night.
(3.4.144—145)
These references show a Lady Macbeth who cares deeply about her husband and sees not only his strength but some of his weaknesses as well (i.e. “without the illness” and “art thou afeard.”) She is concerned with his well-being (“you do unbend your noble strength”) and with his public personae (“Question enrages him.”) The text Ms. Terry may have focused on could lead to a woman who sees the struggle her husband is about to undertake. I do evidence that she has weaknesses. She says in Act II scene ii lines
11—12, “Had he not resembled my father… I had done’t.” I agree that it is a mistake to
not make their love very real. My problems are again many.
Ms. Terry was extremely worried about the audience liking her. Because of this she found a new level to Lady M that is often overlooked by actresses, but I think by making her ambition only for her husband she becomes less interesting. How many people are giving enough to kill a king in their home? And would Shakespeare write a woman so loving that she calls on demons and loses her mind? I believe also that playing so much on her frailty discounts all of the strength she does possess. She challenges his manhood. Is this the act of a loving and devoted wife who wants only for her husband’s happiness? Does the promise of bashing the brains out of a child come from a frail woman who is blinded by love of her husband? Terry gives us a side of Lady M that
seemed lacking in Siddons’ interpretation, but by pushing her too far in the other direction Terry undermines what is clearly written by Shakespeare. He gives us a woman who begs for cruelty and then uses it against the man she loves. She is a woman whose desire for power leads her to plot a murder of a king in her own home. Terry’s view, though valid in many ways, erases the complexities of Lady Macbeth that intrigue the audience.
In 1978, Dame Judi Dench played Lady Macbeth opposite Ian McKellen. Her most notable choice was to be Macbeth’s equal. She neither dominated him nor submitted to him. And like many Lady M’s before she clearly loved Macbeth. Critics have said of her RSC performance, Dench transforms “from cold, malevolent she-devil to sadly broken, guilt-ridden madwoman.” While calling upon evil forces to come to her aid she shows a little bit of humanity by getting frightened of what she is asking. Ms. Dench’s Lady M has been called a “barometer of guilt.” Macbeth’s (as well as her own guilt) are played out more in her actions than in those of her husband. She inhabited the choice that they are in this deed together.
Some textual references to this choice are:
Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is to full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.
(1.5.16—18)
But screw your courage to the sticking place
And we’ll not fail.
(1.7.70—71)
A little water clears us of this deed.
(2.2.86)
As his equal she is able to see what he may be unwilling to do, she steadies herself to be his support. Dench may have latched on to Lady M’s references to “us” and “we.” After the deed is put into motion, she speaks in terms of their togetherness. Lines such as, “These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so it will make us mad (2.2.37—38),” and the previously mentioned, “A little water clears us of this deed.”
My problem with Dame Dench’s choice is that she didn’t seem to use Lady Macbeth’s ambition as fully as it seems to exist in the text. She wants power. She does love her husband very much and is willing to help him, but when he refuses to go any further her desire for the throne wins over her love for her husband. She forces him to go through with the murder. She chides him and calls his manhood into question. She does not say to him, “Honey, I love you, and if you think it is best to back down, I’m with you.” She tells him to buck up and give her what he promised her. She certainly wants him there. He is not just a means to an end. But she will not let him break his promise.
She wants to be in power. They are equals, I think Dench is right in that choice, but she is adamant about one thing and that is becoming queen. The next bit of research I obtained is the critical analysis of Lady Macbeth made by several Shakespeare scholars. My main resources were Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human and Jan Kott’s Shakespeare Our Contemporary. I also pulled from dramaturgical references to Holinshed’s Chronicle and stories of the historical Macbeth.
Harold Bloom in The Invention of the Human brings up idea that informed and even translated directly into the creation of my Lady Macbeth. One common idea he presents is that Macbeth is her second husband. He claims that Macbeth is dependent on Lady Macbeth. I do believe that in many ways he is dependent. He comes to her first with the witches’ promise. He is lead by her insistence of their steps to power. His dependence on her also allows for a greater sense of loss for Lady M when he starts to exclude her from plans. If, after the murder, he no longer needs her, the steps to her decline seem clear. She has gone from his trusted, needed advisor to a wife who is purposefully being left out. Bloom refers to Lady Macbeth as “pure will.” The lack of will that Macbeth seems to have succumbed to is what makes Lady M so necessary to him, particularly early on. She lets her desire to be queen drive her and her husband to regicide in her home. It seems that Macbeth could not have gotten to that point by himself. He says that he had been honored and it wasn’t yet time to give up those honors, even though she is suggesting greater honors. The main ideas I took away from my reading included that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are the happiest couple in all of Shakespeare. He calls them, “…persuasive and valuable personalities, profoundly in love with each other.” This statement particularly informed my choices for Lady Macbeth. In this case, the idea that they loved each other seemed more useful than the idea that she was a mother figure for Macbeth, or that she needed him to achieve her political goals, or that it was a lust/sex based relationship. That being said, I do believe there are clear moments when each of these ideas are present. She has to scold him at times for being afraid and for getting upset. She does send him to bed, like a mother, after the disastrous banquet. Her need for Macbeth as her way into power is obvious in that she cannot gain power as a woman without a man. She needs to be married to man who can get her to the top. I believe she got lucky with a powerful man whom she also deeply loves. The idea of them as a sexual couple will lead me into the next author whose work influenced my choices for Lady Macbeth, Jan Kott.
In Shakespeare Our Contemporary, particularly the chapter entitled “Macbeth, or Death-Infected,” Jan Kott discusses a Lady Macbeth who is the man in the relationship. He sees her charge to murder as “…a confirmation of manhood, an act of love.” Kott talks about two people who are “sexually obsessed with each other” but who have suffered a “great erotic defeat.” While I do not know what textual evidence he has for this, besides the strong sexual language of their first meeting and the constant attacks on Macbeth’s manhood, I think the idea is a usable one. I put to use the idea that Lady Macbeth finds some kind of sensual gratification in the enacting of this murder. Also, I thought of times where Lady M does step up and become the “man.” She often puts herself in the position of power, telling Macbeth to “leave the all the rest to me,” manipulating him into agreeing to murder when he is clearly against it. On the other hand, I think there are times that she is just as obviously the devoted wife—she is the hostess and the first face for the guests to see, uses her womanhood against him just as easily as she challenges his masculinity, “I have given suck…”
The historical Lady Macbeth is a woman named Gruoch—Scottish women didn’t actually take the name of their husbands. It is known that this woman had a son by a first marriage. Unlike in Shakespeare’s telling, this son lived to adulthood and actually held the throne for a short period of time before being killed. The real “Lady Macbeth” killed her first husband. Gruoch actually had a claim to the throne, or she would have if she were a man. She was the granddaughter of King Kenneth III (a direct descendant of Kenneth MacAlpine the first king of the Scots) which would, if she were a male, have given the same right to the throne as Duncan and Macbeth.
21 March 2008
Macbeth hath murdered sleep
I've had insomnia for the last couple of weeks and also some bloody dreams (which I'm not going into here).
The insomnia does seem to be related to having ideas and working through issues to do with the Scottish play but also work and family etc.....
Anyway for me the thing about directing or being in a play is to really get to the heart of it and immerse myself in it. I'm wondering if sleep deprivation will give me new insights.
Oh and we've discovered the school won't let us have matinees during the week as they need the auditorium for classes as their classrooms are inadequate for the current roll. Which is a shame as one or two weekday matinees (if the cast could do them) would have been great.
The insomnia does seem to be related to having ideas and working through issues to do with the Scottish play but also work and family etc.....
Anyway for me the thing about directing or being in a play is to really get to the heart of it and immerse myself in it. I'm wondering if sleep deprivation will give me new insights.
Oh and we've discovered the school won't let us have matinees during the week as they need the auditorium for classes as their classrooms are inadequate for the current roll. Which is a shame as one or two weekday matinees (if the cast could do them) would have been great.
19 March 2008
Opening scene - warning spoiler
I won't go into this in too much detail as I plan to let this blog be used as a school resource closer to the season.
The play needs to begin in the present and at the moment that Macbeth comes under the witches thrall he perceives the world as circa 1000 Scotland.
The present setting is modern independent Scotland with a newly restored monarchy and Macbeth, third in line to the throne, is commander of the Scots forces in Afghanistan or Iraq. Banquo is his 2-I-C. While in Afghanistan, Scots General Cawdor is exposed for traitorously supporting one of the local war lords, and Macbeth exposes him and comes back a war hero.
This will make Macbeth more than just some old Scottish git and help modern audiences to relate to him.
But post witches it's all old castles and swords. Until the end.
The play needs to begin in the present and at the moment that Macbeth comes under the witches thrall he perceives the world as circa 1000 Scotland.
The present setting is modern independent Scotland with a newly restored monarchy and Macbeth, third in line to the throne, is commander of the Scots forces in Afghanistan or Iraq. Banquo is his 2-I-C. While in Afghanistan, Scots General Cawdor is exposed for traitorously supporting one of the local war lords, and Macbeth exposes him and comes back a war hero.
This will make Macbeth more than just some old Scottish git and help modern audiences to relate to him.
But post witches it's all old castles and swords. Until the end.
Witches - warning spoiler
Depending on the auditions I'm pretty sure now what I want for the witches.
As outlined in earlier posts I want on the outside 'fair' witches not foul. They will be horrid creatures on the inside but I'm going more for Sirens than hags.
And that leads me to the opening scenes.
As outlined in earlier posts I want on the outside 'fair' witches not foul. They will be horrid creatures on the inside but I'm going more for Sirens than hags.
And that leads me to the opening scenes.
17 March 2008
Washing your hands of it
Lady Macbeth Not Alone in Her Quest for Spotlessness
By BENEDICT CAREY NY Times
Liars, cheats, philanderers and murderers are not renowned for exquisite personal hygiene, but then no one has studied their showering habits. They may scrub extra hard after a con job, use $40 hyacinth shampoo after a secret tryst or book a weekend at a spa after a particularly ugly hit. They are human beings, after all, and if a study published last week is any guide, they feel a strong urge to wash their hands — literally — after a despicable act in an unconscious effort to ease their consciences. And it works, at least for minor guilt stains. People who washed their hands after contemplating an unethical act were less troubled by their thoughts than those who didn’t, the study found. “The association between moral and physical purity has been taken for granted for so long that it was startling that no one had ever shown empirical evidence of it,” said Chen-Bo Zhong, an author of the new research and a behavioral researcher at the University of Toronto. The study, which he wrote with Katie Liljenquist, a graduate student at Northwestern University, appeared in the journal Science. The researchers call this urge to clean up the “Macbeth effect,” after the scene in Shakespeare’s tragedy in which Lady Macbeth moans, “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” after bloodying her hands when her husband, at her urging, murders King Duncan. In one of several experiments among Northwestern undergraduates, the researchers had one group of students recall an unethical act from their past, like betraying a friend, and another group reflect on an ethical deed, like returning lost money. Afterward, the students had their choice of a gift, either a pencil or an antiseptic wipe. Those who had reflected on a shameful act were twice as likely as the others to take the wipe. In another experiment, the researchers found that students who had been contemplating an unethical deed rated the value of cleaning products significantly higher than peers who had been thinking about an ethical act. Psychologists have known for years that when people betray their values, they feel a need to compensate. Christians who have read a blasphemous story about Jesus express a desire to go to church more frequently; social liberals who feel they have discriminated express an increased desire to volunteer for civil rights work. “It’s sometimes called symbolic cleansing, or moral cleansing, and it’s an attempt to repair moral identity,” said Dr. Philip Tetlock, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of California, Berkeley. Sure enough, Mr. Zhong and Ms. Liljenquist found that students who had been thinking about past sins were very likely to agree to volunteer their time to help with a graduate school project — unless they had been allowed to wash their hands, which cut their willingness to volunteer roughly in half. Several people known to have expressed guilt over spreading rumors were asked to comment for the record on the findings, but all declined. And efforts to contact hit men to inquire about personal hygiene were deemed unwise; none had publicists. But Macbeth was available for comment. Liev Schreiber, who played Macbeth to critical acclaim this summer at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, said the moral weight of the murder in the play was exhausting. And he said that cast members lined up to shower at the theater, rather than waiting until they got home. “That was unusual — usually no one uses those theater showers,” Mr. Schreiber said in an interview. “I had to shower. I was covered in eight gallons of fake blood by the end.” He said he had no idea how much the cast’s cleansing was because of to the moral horror of the play and how much was because of the muggy summer weather. Either way, the Macbeths, by the last act, have fallen to pieces, physically and mentally, despite compulsive efforts to purge their sins. Mr. Zhong said in an interview that for this couple at least, all the kingdom’s washbasins were not enough to ease their consciences. But the murder of a king, he acknowledged, falls into a different category from the confessed sins of the undergraduates, which included shoplifting, lying and “kissing a married man.” “We do believe there might be limits to how well simple hand washing can clean your slate,” he said, “but it remains to be seen where that limit is.”
By BENEDICT CAREY NY Times
Liars, cheats, philanderers and murderers are not renowned for exquisite personal hygiene, but then no one has studied their showering habits. They may scrub extra hard after a con job, use $40 hyacinth shampoo after a secret tryst or book a weekend at a spa after a particularly ugly hit. They are human beings, after all, and if a study published last week is any guide, they feel a strong urge to wash their hands — literally — after a despicable act in an unconscious effort to ease their consciences. And it works, at least for minor guilt stains. People who washed their hands after contemplating an unethical act were less troubled by their thoughts than those who didn’t, the study found. “The association between moral and physical purity has been taken for granted for so long that it was startling that no one had ever shown empirical evidence of it,” said Chen-Bo Zhong, an author of the new research and a behavioral researcher at the University of Toronto. The study, which he wrote with Katie Liljenquist, a graduate student at Northwestern University, appeared in the journal Science. The researchers call this urge to clean up the “Macbeth effect,” after the scene in Shakespeare’s tragedy in which Lady Macbeth moans, “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” after bloodying her hands when her husband, at her urging, murders King Duncan. In one of several experiments among Northwestern undergraduates, the researchers had one group of students recall an unethical act from their past, like betraying a friend, and another group reflect on an ethical deed, like returning lost money. Afterward, the students had their choice of a gift, either a pencil or an antiseptic wipe. Those who had reflected on a shameful act were twice as likely as the others to take the wipe. In another experiment, the researchers found that students who had been contemplating an unethical deed rated the value of cleaning products significantly higher than peers who had been thinking about an ethical act. Psychologists have known for years that when people betray their values, they feel a need to compensate. Christians who have read a blasphemous story about Jesus express a desire to go to church more frequently; social liberals who feel they have discriminated express an increased desire to volunteer for civil rights work. “It’s sometimes called symbolic cleansing, or moral cleansing, and it’s an attempt to repair moral identity,” said Dr. Philip Tetlock, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of California, Berkeley. Sure enough, Mr. Zhong and Ms. Liljenquist found that students who had been thinking about past sins were very likely to agree to volunteer their time to help with a graduate school project — unless they had been allowed to wash their hands, which cut their willingness to volunteer roughly in half. Several people known to have expressed guilt over spreading rumors were asked to comment for the record on the findings, but all declined. And efforts to contact hit men to inquire about personal hygiene were deemed unwise; none had publicists. But Macbeth was available for comment. Liev Schreiber, who played Macbeth to critical acclaim this summer at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, said the moral weight of the murder in the play was exhausting. And he said that cast members lined up to shower at the theater, rather than waiting until they got home. “That was unusual — usually no one uses those theater showers,” Mr. Schreiber said in an interview. “I had to shower. I was covered in eight gallons of fake blood by the end.” He said he had no idea how much the cast’s cleansing was because of to the moral horror of the play and how much was because of the muggy summer weather. Either way, the Macbeths, by the last act, have fallen to pieces, physically and mentally, despite compulsive efforts to purge their sins. Mr. Zhong said in an interview that for this couple at least, all the kingdom’s washbasins were not enough to ease their consciences. But the murder of a king, he acknowledged, falls into a different category from the confessed sins of the undergraduates, which included shoplifting, lying and “kissing a married man.” “We do believe there might be limits to how well simple hand washing can clean your slate,” he said, “but it remains to be seen where that limit is.”
16 March 2008
Lesser than Macbeth ...less words anyway - the edits
To get the show to 90 minutes some savage cuts are required.
The following scenes are the ones I've targeted in my script editing... although lines go in other scenes. The Macbeths' lines are mostly in tact.
Act 1 scene 2- the Bloody Sergeant scene - a long scene where Macbeth's valour and military achievement is praised. Down to one speech and a battle.
Act 1 sc 3 - the first part of the witches scene where they go on about the Sailor going to Aleppo has been cut. Angus has been written out in the second part of the scene and the dialogue there cut.
Act 1 Sc 4 - a third removed. The important thing here is Duncan announces his son will be Prince of Cumberland.
Act 2 Sc 3 - half of the porter's scene.
Act2 Sc 4 - the old man has been written out and this becomes a discussion between Macduff and Ross.
Act 3 sc 1 - much of the lengthy discussion with the murderer has been removed.
Act 3 sc 3 - this is where Banquo is murdered and Fleance escapes, I'm opting to show this rather than talk it. This is down to 4 lines and a brutal murder.
Act 3 Sc 5 - jury is out on how much here is cut but Hecate's long intro is excessive. IF Hecate stays in this will be a lot shorter.
Act 3 Sc 6 - Cut. The one line of value is written into Act 3 Sc 4.
Act 4 Sc 2 - This is long for what it is. Again show not tell, a few lines to set the scene, Lady Macduff's despair and then the murderers turn up and kill them.
Act 4 Sc 3 - cut from 7 pages to 2. While I understand the testing of Macduff in the atmosphere of people not trusting each other it reads like Morecombe and Wise. I've written the doctor out, and allowed for some build up of tension with Ross hovering all the while so the audience know what he has come to say.
Act 5 Sc 2 - down to a few lines
Act 5 Sc 7 - Lines removed here. Fighting and Macbeth talks to himself.
Act 5 Sc 9 - Young Siward (killed in sc 7) and old Siward dialogue removed. Comrades all embrace each other, mourn the dead and then Macduff brings in Macbeth's head. Malcolm ends the play.
The following scenes are the ones I've targeted in my script editing... although lines go in other scenes. The Macbeths' lines are mostly in tact.
Act 1 scene 2- the Bloody Sergeant scene - a long scene where Macbeth's valour and military achievement is praised. Down to one speech and a battle.
Act 1 sc 3 - the first part of the witches scene where they go on about the Sailor going to Aleppo has been cut. Angus has been written out in the second part of the scene and the dialogue there cut.
Act 1 Sc 4 - a third removed. The important thing here is Duncan announces his son will be Prince of Cumberland.
Act 2 Sc 3 - half of the porter's scene.
Act2 Sc 4 - the old man has been written out and this becomes a discussion between Macduff and Ross.
Act 3 sc 1 - much of the lengthy discussion with the murderer has been removed.
Act 3 sc 3 - this is where Banquo is murdered and Fleance escapes, I'm opting to show this rather than talk it. This is down to 4 lines and a brutal murder.
Act 3 Sc 5 - jury is out on how much here is cut but Hecate's long intro is excessive. IF Hecate stays in this will be a lot shorter.
Act 3 Sc 6 - Cut. The one line of value is written into Act 3 Sc 4.
Act 4 Sc 2 - This is long for what it is. Again show not tell, a few lines to set the scene, Lady Macduff's despair and then the murderers turn up and kill them.
Act 4 Sc 3 - cut from 7 pages to 2. While I understand the testing of Macduff in the atmosphere of people not trusting each other it reads like Morecombe and Wise. I've written the doctor out, and allowed for some build up of tension with Ross hovering all the while so the audience know what he has come to say.
Act 5 Sc 2 - down to a few lines
Act 5 Sc 7 - Lines removed here. Fighting and Macbeth talks to himself.
Act 5 Sc 9 - Young Siward (killed in sc 7) and old Siward dialogue removed. Comrades all embrace each other, mourn the dead and then Macduff brings in Macbeth's head. Malcolm ends the play.
14 March 2008
10 March 2008
Ahhh! We've changed....
The introduction to the Arden Shakespeare notes that the Macbeths killing of Duncan, Banquo and everyone else didn't seem unconvincing to audiences till around 1900.
If that is correct then it was either:
that the change in our understanding of the human mind leads to a different understand of how people behave (eg Freud, Jung and modern psycho-analysis)
OR
People were just used to barbaric acts - that we in the modern west have trouble believing. But that the Islamic world (eg Taleban), Africa the civil wars accept as common place.
If that is correct then it was either:
that the change in our understanding of the human mind leads to a different understand of how people behave (eg Freud, Jung and modern psycho-analysis)
OR
People were just used to barbaric acts - that we in the modern west have trouble believing. But that the Islamic world (eg Taleban), Africa the civil wars accept as common place.
09 March 2008
Staging decisions
Given we don't audition for a 8 or more weeks it may seem odd I am already looking at the set. Or it may not. But I've found myself needing to clarify the set to clarify the script cuts.
The theatre is a huge round with two rectangular boxes added on opposite sides- one for the foyer and toilets, the other for a dressing room and school supply room.
The seats are on one side in three blocks covering most of the half round. The space is a large circle. Ideally there'd be a huge revolve or multilevels to the building.
Our constraints include:
* There is no fly floor.
* The beams, while adequate, can't easily support people (which means there are unlikely to be flying witches).
* We have to strike the set every day so that the school who we share it with can use it for assemblies, as their gym and for dance and other classes.
* Actors behind the audience can't get to the back of the auditorium without going outside.
* The floor is polished light brown wood and past performances there have shown it makes blackouts hard and the floor reflects a lot of light.
* The floor is sprung and makes a lot of noise if hard shoes are worn on it.
* The architect has achieved a fantastic feat by making a round space with poor sight lines!
* If it rains it drowns out the sound in the auditorium.
* You can't use smoke machines as the fans in the ceiling sound like a helicopter hovering overhead.
* Oh and from the back of the auditorium you need to be miked to be heard in the audience UNLESS you have strategically placed buffers.
What do I need/want?
The script calls for a castle (with bed chambers, banquet hall, entrance area), a blasted heath, some battlefields, roads, a forest, the English Court, a witches' hideway and battlements.
I need a ghost, some apparitions, and theoretically flying witches (Hecate and the other three, not the first three).
Other special effects are smoke, lightening, and some sort of cauldron.
Sooooooo......
I've decided that I can only have minimal set and will got for a table and chairs, and a cauldron (cliche cliche). I need one small rostra, and the rest of the set will be lights, blacks (tabs), and dry ice.
For layout I'm intending to have a black curtain in a straight line as close to the audience as possible, with a white curtain in the middle of it to act as a screen for front and back lighting.
Macbeth's castle will be in the audience, and the banquets will be up against the front row with the audience as guests. The heath, battlefields and the roads will be up against the curtains or played behind them. The English court needs to be up somewhere... not sure where but we have a huge mobile tower that two actors can work on at extreme stage left or right. The two doors between the audience will be Duncan's chamber, the door to the castle, Lady Macbeth's chamber and misc internal doors. The white curtain will lift in the last scenes and there will be a blacks behind it to allow for the advance of Macduff and the army.
I have decided that despite all the fantastic space we have, that the disadvanages call for a tight space and this will need to add to the claustrophobia and feeling of evil. Also if the audience finds themselves in Macbeth's castle it may work to our advantage thematically, with some referential nod to the evil without, that the castle should protect you from, being let in.
The theatre is a huge round with two rectangular boxes added on opposite sides- one for the foyer and toilets, the other for a dressing room and school supply room.
The seats are on one side in three blocks covering most of the half round. The space is a large circle. Ideally there'd be a huge revolve or multilevels to the building.
Our constraints include:
* There is no fly floor.
* The beams, while adequate, can't easily support people (which means there are unlikely to be flying witches).
* We have to strike the set every day so that the school who we share it with can use it for assemblies, as their gym and for dance and other classes.
* Actors behind the audience can't get to the back of the auditorium without going outside.
* The floor is polished light brown wood and past performances there have shown it makes blackouts hard and the floor reflects a lot of light.
* The floor is sprung and makes a lot of noise if hard shoes are worn on it.
* The architect has achieved a fantastic feat by making a round space with poor sight lines!
* If it rains it drowns out the sound in the auditorium.
* You can't use smoke machines as the fans in the ceiling sound like a helicopter hovering overhead.
* Oh and from the back of the auditorium you need to be miked to be heard in the audience UNLESS you have strategically placed buffers.
What do I need/want?
The script calls for a castle (with bed chambers, banquet hall, entrance area), a blasted heath, some battlefields, roads, a forest, the English Court, a witches' hideway and battlements.
I need a ghost, some apparitions, and theoretically flying witches (Hecate and the other three, not the first three).
Other special effects are smoke, lightening, and some sort of cauldron.
Sooooooo......
I've decided that I can only have minimal set and will got for a table and chairs, and a cauldron (cliche cliche). I need one small rostra, and the rest of the set will be lights, blacks (tabs), and dry ice.
For layout I'm intending to have a black curtain in a straight line as close to the audience as possible, with a white curtain in the middle of it to act as a screen for front and back lighting.
Macbeth's castle will be in the audience, and the banquets will be up against the front row with the audience as guests. The heath, battlefields and the roads will be up against the curtains or played behind them. The English court needs to be up somewhere... not sure where but we have a huge mobile tower that two actors can work on at extreme stage left or right. The two doors between the audience will be Duncan's chamber, the door to the castle, Lady Macbeth's chamber and misc internal doors. The white curtain will lift in the last scenes and there will be a blacks behind it to allow for the advance of Macduff and the army.
I have decided that despite all the fantastic space we have, that the disadvanages call for a tight space and this will need to add to the claustrophobia and feeling of evil. Also if the audience finds themselves in Macbeth's castle it may work to our advantage thematically, with some referential nod to the evil without, that the castle should protect you from, being let in.
08 March 2008
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.
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.
06 March 2008
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.
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.
05 March 2008
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.
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.
03 March 2008
A bog-standard old school essay on why Lady Macbeth is the stronger of the two in their relationship
viz
Lady Macbeth is the real power behind the throne because she is the dominant partner at the beginning of the play, she persuades Macbeth to achieve his goal of being king, and she plans and organizes the murder of Duncan. Lady Macbeth is strong-willed and takes on the traditional male role in a marriage. Macbeth, on the other hand, is weaker than she is, and takes on the traditional female role in a marriage. For these reasons, Lady Macbeth is the dominant partner. Also, Macbeth is undecided on whether to murder Duncan or not, until Lady Macbeth taunts him and then assures him. It is she who persuades him to murder Duncan. Finally, Lady Macbeth plans and organizes the murder, so that all Macbeth has to do is the actual killing. It is power that Lady Macbeth uses to get her way in the world. She uses her power over Macbeth to convince him to murder Duncan. By murdering Duncan, Macbeth gains power for himself and Lady Macbeth - the power of a queen and her king.
Utterly simplistic - if she is so strong and dominant why does she kill herself????
Magic
What is it that makes Macbeth so special?
It's the shortest of the great Shakespearean tragedies. It is accessible and has no subplots.
It is the story of one man's fatal flaw and his decline from hero to hated villain. It's full of blood.
Of the posters I've reviewed I see crowns, blood and heroic warriors.
http://images.google.co.nz/images?hl=en&q=macbeth+poster&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
I love this one:
http://images.google.co.nz/imgres?imgurl=http://admin.cru2.net/images/1184057953poster01_sml01.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.thebiggerpicture.biz/home.html&h=325&w=482&sz=70&hl=en&start=94&sig2=OG402Pp8afWk42oQVwFgQA&tbnid=bvCH7ajzfeE9DM:&tbnh=87&tbnw=129&ei=1aXLR8W4NZrWgQPHqeitCQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmacbeth%2Bposter%26start%3D80%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
And Macbeth is full of magic.
In the late 1600s the witches scenes were increased, songs added, and they were made to fly on hoists. When Samuel Pepys saw Macbeth he described it as a musical.
For me the witches and the magic are a key factor in the success and allure of the show. I'm sure I have heard of a production where the witches were written out, although I can't locate it.
This is close and would have been entertaining for it's odd take: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE1DD1F3FF934A1575AC0A967958260
It's the shortest of the great Shakespearean tragedies. It is accessible and has no subplots.
It is the story of one man's fatal flaw and his decline from hero to hated villain. It's full of blood.
Of the posters I've reviewed I see crowns, blood and heroic warriors.
http://images.google.co.nz/images?hl=en&q=macbeth+poster&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
I love this one:
http://images.google.co.nz/imgres?imgurl=http://admin.cru2.net/images/1184057953poster01_sml01.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.thebiggerpicture.biz/home.html&h=325&w=482&sz=70&hl=en&start=94&sig2=OG402Pp8afWk42oQVwFgQA&tbnid=bvCH7ajzfeE9DM:&tbnh=87&tbnw=129&ei=1aXLR8W4NZrWgQPHqeitCQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmacbeth%2Bposter%26start%3D80%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
And Macbeth is full of magic.
In the late 1600s the witches scenes were increased, songs added, and they were made to fly on hoists. When Samuel Pepys saw Macbeth he described it as a musical.
For me the witches and the magic are a key factor in the success and allure of the show. I'm sure I have heard of a production where the witches were written out, although I can't locate it.
This is close and would have been entertaining for it's odd take: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE1DD1F3FF934A1575AC0A967958260
02 March 2008
Music & costume
I've been listening the the Dufay collective, some Elizabethan music and some chant and plainsong. Also I've sampled music such as 'Dead can Dance' and the 'Cocteau Twins' - sort of modern dark ages music. And I've listened to a lot of trance.
This intrigues me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCnOqciO7G4 Dead can Dance sampled with trance.
I've found what the witches could look like (not the woman the costumes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvKbGQRrWCM
This intrigues me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCnOqciO7G4 Dead can Dance sampled with trance.
I've found what the witches could look like (not the woman the costumes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvKbGQRrWCM
01 March 2008
The venue
When I decided I wanted to direct Macbeth I had in mind the Mill Theatre here in Christchurch. For years I've stared at it thinking how it would be a great place to put on the Scottish play. It's a pros arch, black box. The theatre is an old Mill and has the feel of a well used venue. It has a ghost. As I imagined Macbeth at the Mill I saw a full-on traditional rendition. But it is not at the Mill but at the Elmwood Auditorium.
I've spent 6 years writing site-specific plays, that is plays performed in the venue they are set in. I've learnt from that that it is really important to match the style of production with the location for the performance.
Elmwood Auditorium is shared with a school and has a light polished wooden floor. We can't leave a set up so it has to be struck every night. The venue is an odd shape- a half round but with a huge back stage area. A traditional rendition is not a good option.
The 2008 Elmwood Macbeth needs to be in tune with this.
A modern space. The wooden floors reflect light. The ceiling is incredibly high.
So set and 'set-up' - initial thoughts are:
* Modern setting
* Lots of smoke and dry-ice
* Music and lighting key components of set
* The set has one or two rostra elements that roll out
* A screen that can be used to project from behind and from the front
* The ceiling height and shiney floor need to be used
I've spent 6 years writing site-specific plays, that is plays performed in the venue they are set in. I've learnt from that that it is really important to match the style of production with the location for the performance.
Elmwood Auditorium is shared with a school and has a light polished wooden floor. We can't leave a set up so it has to be struck every night. The venue is an odd shape- a half round but with a huge back stage area. A traditional rendition is not a good option.
The 2008 Elmwood Macbeth needs to be in tune with this.
A modern space. The wooden floors reflect light. The ceiling is incredibly high.
So set and 'set-up' - initial thoughts are:
* Modern setting
* Lots of smoke and dry-ice
* Music and lighting key components of set
* The set has one or two rostra elements that roll out
* A screen that can be used to project from behind and from the front
* The ceiling height and shiney floor need to be used
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