The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0999. Sunday, 5 October 1997.
[1] From: Richard Nathan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 2 Oct 1997 15:13:19 +0000
Subj: Re: SHK 8.0991 Re: Macbeth
[2] From: Tim Richards <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 03 Oct 1997 00:17:03 +0800
Subj: SHK 8.0991 Re: Macbeth
[3] From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 02 Oct 1997 20:42:35 +0100
Subj: SHK 8.0984 Re: Macbeth -Reply
[4] From: Stuart Manger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 2 Oct 1997 23:36:41 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 8.0984 Re: Macbeth
[5] From: Eric Salehi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 2 Oct 1997 19:31:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subj: The Witches made him do it (?)
[6] From: Julie Blumenthal <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 02 Oct 1997 12:34:12 -0400 (EDT)
Subj: Re: Macbeth
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Richard Nathan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 2 Oct 1997 15:13:19 +0000
Subject: 8.0991 Re: Macbeth
Comment: Re: SHK 8.0991 Re: Macbeth
Sean Kevin Lawrence wrote:
>I'm wondering if anyone else notices a connection between the absent Sly
>and the absent witches at the end of their respective plays.
Not to mention the Fool disappearing in the middle of "KING LEAR" and
Poins disappearing in the middle of "HENRY IV, PART I" and then coming
back again in the early part of "HENRY IV, PART II" and disappearing
again in the middle of that play!
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Tim Richards <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 03 Oct 1997 00:17:03 +0800
Subject: Re: Macbeth
Comment: SHK 8.0991 Re: Macbeth
H. R. Greenberg wrote:
>One of the most egregious misadventures regarding casting of the witches
>was a church basement production in which my son-trained at London's
>Central Drama school-had the misfortune to play MacDuff. Anent the
>lunatic RICHARD III of Neil Simon's "THE GOODBY GIRL", this production
>featured but two witches-thus whittled down by a lunatic director, so
>that the two women could later play the two murderers.
Ouch, that must have grated. Why on Earth couldn't he have kept three
witches in, having the third play the Third Murderer?
Tim Richards.
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 02 Oct 1997 20:42:35 +0100
Subject: Re: Macbeth -Reply
Comment: SHK 8.0984 Re: Macbeth -Reply
I have been reading and enjoying SHAKSPEReans reminiscences of
production choices for Macbeth. I recommend a book that considers
several major productions on film, stage, and television, examining how
different choices affected interpretation. It is from the University of
Manchester's Shakespeare in Performance series. The title is simply
Macbeth, unless it is Shakespeare in Performance: Macbeth. The author
is Bernice W. Kliman.
There is a chapter on Orson Welle's Macbeth, both stage and film
versions, and another on Polanski's film, both of which were the subject
of yesterday's electronic chatter. Many others are considered as well.
I saw a copy at Stanford Bookstore last week, if anyone in the
neighborhood wants to grab it.
Mike Jensen
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Stuart Manger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 2 Oct 1997 23:36:41 +0100
Subject: 8.0984 Re: Macbeth
Comment: Re: SHK 8.0984 Re: Macbeth
Holinshed or Hall - not Halliwell. He's the film guide chap!
Stuart Manger
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Eric Salehi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 2 Oct 1997 19:31:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: The Witches made him do it (?)
Tim Richards' intriguing questions about _Macbeth_ got me thinking as
well:
does anyone know of a production in which the witches figured as the
Three Fates? Perhaps the connection sounds obvious, but I can't recall
a production that's been done that way, with the sisters wielding
thread, scissors and the whole equipage. Such a move would raise
interesting questions about Macbeth's (and Lady Macbeth's)
responsibility, since the sisters basically would be puppetmasters,
manipulators rather than mere prognosticators.
About five years ago I saw a remarkable staging of the play by Stuffed
Puppet Theater at Theater Project in Baltimore (U.S.). In that
production, a single actor (Australian puppetmaster Trevor ___, whose
last name escapes me just now) played Macbeth and used puppets to
portray the rest of the characters. The identification of Macbeth with
the puppetmaster served to underscore the character's agency. I suppose
my concept would produce the opposite effect by making Macbeth
essentially a puppet himself. Has this been done?
-- Eric Salehi
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Julie Blumenthal <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 02 Oct 1997 12:34:12 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Macbeth
I recently saw a production of "The Witches' Macbeth" at the First
Annual Fringe Festival in New York City. It's a 75-minute adaptation
(fairly minimal cuts for the most part) based around the central
assumption of the witches as guiding forces of all the action of the
play. As such, they're always lurking in the background and pulling
various little tricks and gestures on the rest of the ensemble -
sometimes seen by the ensemble, sometimes invisible. I thought it was
interesting, but not necessarily a ground-breaking interpretation. Fun
though. In any case, it did figure them quite prominently throughout,
and if I remember right they did come in at the end to 'wrap things up'
just as they had come in to start things up at the opening. This was
symbolized most by a huge red (bloody?) cord which they brought in at
the top of the show and unrolled to make a circle, in which most of the
action occurred throughout, and which they I think rolled back up and
took off at the end.
The company's called The Cannon Theatre Co.; this was their first work
as a company, so I don't have any more info.
Also, just as a note of interest on MacB, also at the Fringe was "Lady
Macbeth", a London Fringe two-person show which was a sort of
'backstage' Macbeth, positing a behind-the-scenes romance between the
Lady and MacDuff. Interesting...
A votre sante,
Julie Blumenthal
