MACBETH: If you can't say it, why do it?

There is a tradition in theater that if you say "Macbeth," bad luck will arrive soon afterwards. You'll hear people referring to it as "the Scottish play." The tradition is powerful, and theater folk grumble and scowl if they hear you say "Macbeth." I think the tradition allows you to say it when you are working on the play but probably only in controlled circumstances.

If it is difficult to know when it's all right to say "Macbeth," how difficult is it to mount a production of the play? I think it's very difficult. How about doing it with high school actors? I think even more difficult. Then why do it? A good question.

There are several reasons that occur to me as we work on the show at The Theater Project with thirty high school actors.

1. •Wendy Poole, our Executive Director, recommended it.
   

2. •There's nary a high school student who hasn't read it, usually in junior year.
   

3. •It makes exciting theater.
   

4. •In that excitement, it comments on ambition and the violent pursuit of power that is still with us today, 404 years after the play was first produced.
   

5. •I remember enjoying teaching the play to high school students in Lebanon and Massachusetts, very different groups of high school students (those in Lebanon spoke Arabic as their first language).
   

6. •MACBETH is a play, not a scholarly text. It was written to be performed, not studied. As a former English teacher, I think it's a great idea to read and study MACBETH in high school. As a former high school student - loooonnnngggg ago - I think it's also a great idea for high school students to perform Shakespeare as live relevant theater and to see performances of Shakespeare. I did neither as a high school student and was the poorer for it.
   

High school students have a remarkable facility to learn lines, and, if encouraged, to make those lines their own. Good actors aspire to this. If the actors cannot "own their lines," those lines won't make sense to the audience; the audience won't believe what they're hearing and seeing. If the actors own the lines, which means they know what they're saying and why they're saying it, the audience will believe them, Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief." (I think it was Coleridge!)

If high school students have to study something, or, to put it another way, if we think something is worth our young people's study, then it is important, even essential, that they be able to make what they are studying  their own, that they "own" it. It is important that they be able to say that they "get it" and, based on that understanding, be able to offer and explain their opinion. It's not enough for us to say: "It's Shakespeare so you've got to learn it." And if it's a play, it's important they be able to approach it as a play.

So, we're doing it.

How to cast it? Any man, young or old, who loves theater, wants to play Macbeth. Any woman, Lady Macbeth. I consider ability and attitude, when casting. I also consider how long the young actors have been at it, "whose turn it is." Casting Macbeth was no different. There are some "spear carriers," warriors and servants who say little but are on stage acting and learning how to do it better. They will have their turn at major roles if the stick with it. There are fine young actors in supporting roles, some of whom could have been cast as Macbeth or Lady Macbeth. Some of them have played lead roles before; others will likely play a major role before they leave high school.  Some have been at it a long time, have learned a lot and have shown they are ready for a major role. Our goal with each Young Company show at The Theater Project is to develop an ensemble, a group of actors who support each other and have learned to work well together. That is the goal of this production of MACBETH.

This MACBETH will be as good as it can be with this director, this ensemble of young actors and the technical, artistic and moral support of Wendy, Chris and JP at the Theater Project. I hope audiences are moved and provoked by the production. Even more, I hope the actors learn something about theater, about working together and about MACBETH.