Macblog: Building the World
October 24th, 2010
Here at Mortal Folly, one of the key goals of our Mainstage productions is to build a world in which every character onstage is a living, breathing human being; a whole, complete world wherein each moment of humanity can be reveled. Creating this kind of environment invariably draws the audience deeper into the story, and allows them to connect more fully with the characters and story. To build that world requires an invested and committed process, combining extensive text work, organic behavioral movement, and thorough development of the emotional life to create the characters…but that’s a discussion for another day.
Today, we’re going to look at PHYSICALLY building the world of the play. As the famous and incredibly beautiful prologue to Shakespeare’s Henry V shows, we as performers often have to work without the resources necessary to re-create the world in which our characters live:
…can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings…
–Henry V, prologue
We have to find ways to create the impression of a world, while often working with as little a few chairs or black cubes onstage. So, what surprises do we have in store for our upcoming production of Macbeth? For those of you who know our venue, the wonderful Gene Frankel Theatre, you know that is a fantastic space to work in. It is a large, adaptable space, with lots of stage space, stadium-style audience seating, and a loft balcony.
This last feature was one of the things that drew us to this space; there are many theatre companies that would give their right arm to be able to have that luxury. A balcony allows for a number of dramatic innovations; for example, you can have more than one scene in process on the upper and lower levels, creating a sense of contemporaneous action that is often hard to achieve on stage. A balcony can also be used to artificially create space between characters on on stage–as seen in Romeo & Juliet, the simple height difference between players can create a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, despite only being a few feet away from each other. Of course, we intend to put our luck to good use and make the balcony work for us.
Below is a concept sketch for our Macbeth set:
As you can see, there’s some really cool things going on here. We’re looking at expanding the balcony with platforms on both sides of the stage, so there will essentially be an entire second floor of playing space. In addition, there will (hopefully) be a staircase of sorts on the stage right platform, meaning that characters will be able to enter and leave the top floor as part of scenes–a great way to create different “areas” of the world, whether they be rooms in a castle or a tower to climb in order to escape a battle.
On the ground floor, the stage will remain largely empty except for a few walls that give the impression of the inside or outside of a dark ages building. There will likely be small pieces that can be moved on and off as needed. When the playing space becomes the castle at Dunsinane, there may be chairs or a table that indicate that the characters are “inside”; when on the “blasted heath” of Scotland, these trappings will disappear to leave us with a stark, open stage. There may also be tapestries or other hangings that will appear when characters are in one locale or another, giving just a small sense of location in the world that we are building.
As our artistic director, Katherine Harte-DeCoux says:
“We’re trying to fully utilize the space with levels and really create a sense of scope. While it’s impossible to literally stage a battle inside a theatre with only 14 people, if we can encompass the audience and pull them from their every day reality into our long-ago and far-away world of castles and warriors, then the story becomes far more emotionally accessible and compelling.”
As always, there’s more to come, so keep checking back often!
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Macblog: Prophecy
October 18th, 2010
Shakespeare: Writer, Director, Prophet?
Macbeth is a play that is filled with references to the supernatural, magic and prophecy. Several key events of the play revolve around characters’ interpretation or disregard for prophecies, and various interpretations of the text have explored the idea of “fate” or “destiny” versus self-fulfilling prophecy. One thing is frequently overlooked, however: in writing Macbeth, Shakespeare himself became a (likely unwitting) prophet…
The Vision of the Stuart Line
It is commonly thought that Shakespeare chose the subject matter for Macbeth to please King James I (James VI of Scotland), who had de facto united the monarchies of Scotland and England when he inherited the English crown from Elizabeth in 1603. At the time, it was believed Banquo was the progenitor of the Stuart line (from which James hailed), and that James was his 8th descendant. (As an aside, modern research has all but disproved this claim.) In a move that was likely intended to curry James’ favor, Shakespeare included Banquo as an (at least seemingly) virtuous character in the play, and includes the witches’ prophecy that “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.” (I.iii.) When Macbeth revisits the witches in IV.i., he demands to know if the witches’ prophecy will come to pass. In answer, the witches show him a vision of eight kings:
What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?
Another yet! A seventh! I’ll see no more:
And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass
Which shows me many more; and some I see
That two-fold balls and treble scepters carry:
Horrible sight! Now I see ‘tis true,
For the blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me,
And points at them for his.
–Macbeth, Macbeth, IV.i.
The legend of James’ lineage would have been common knowledge at the time, so it is likely that Shakespeare’s audience would have recognized James as the eighth king who, “bears a glass Which shows me many more; and some I see That two-fold balls and treble scepters carry:”. Shakespeare may simply have been flattering James in these lines, by proposing a future where James’ descendants would rule for time immemorial. However, Shakespeare’s text, as it turned out, was more accurate then he could have ever guessed.
The House of Stuart held the throne through another five monarchs after James I, until Queen Anne passed away without issue in 1707–100 years after Shakespeare wrote these fated lines. Furthermore, though the monarchy was passed to the House of Hanover, one branch of the Stuart line descending from Elizabeth of Bohemia (James’ daughter) can be traced all the way to Queen Elizabeth II. So, in one sense, James’ descendants continue to rule the United Kingdom to this day—400 years after the play was written.
More than that, the vision references “two-fold balls and treble scepters” carried by the future monarchs of England; this is thought by many scholars to be a references to future kings ruling a unified England and Scotland (the two-fold balls), and eventually a unified England, Scotland and Ireland (treble scepters; like Scotland, Ireland shared the monarchy with England at that time). Although James’ inheritance of the English throne had created a unified monarchy, England and Scotland were still politically separate countries with separate legislative bodies at the time the play was written. James made formal attempts to unify the nations around that time (he announced his intention to do so in 1603), which were unsuccessful. However, in 1707, the Acts of Union were signed, unifying Scotland and England into the Kingdom of Great Britain, and realizing James’ dream of a single state. Later, in 1800, the Act of Union between the UK and Ireland (who similarly shared a monarch but not a single Parliament) resulted in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland: a single, united country. Although it was not to last, Shakespeare’s ghostly prediction of one king holding the “two-fold balls and treble scepters” came to pass, almost 200 years after the prediction was performed onstage.
Interestingly enough, Shakespeare’s other plays may hold similar prophetic foreshadowings. Many scholars note that Malvolio (a character that may have been based on one or more prominent Puritans of the time) speaks the infamous line, “I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you.” (Twelfth Night, V.i.). This line seems to foretell the Puritans’ rise to power in the mid 1600’s, and the eventual banning of stage plays in 1642 and the demolition of the Globe in 1644. While Shakespeare may well have seen the way the winds were blowing at the time he wrote the play, it is still chilling that his words rang true less than 30 years after his death.
So, Shakespeare the Prophet, or just an author with an astute sense of the times he lived in? Do you know of any other Shakespeare (or other classical text) that inadvertently foretold things to come? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts! And remember to visit often for more blogs and information about Mortal Folly’s upcoming production of Macbeth, opening December 1st at the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York.
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