April 25, 2008
“Is the theater really dead?” That was a line from an early Paul Simon song. The answer is: Not if you’re talking about regional theater. Just last weekend theaters in El Paso/Las Cruces presented the following heavyweight productions: Tennessee Williams’ "Glass Menagerie" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and Shakespeare’s "Taming of the Shrew" and "Macbeth."
Maybe it’s the fact there’s such an incredibly rich backlog of theater from the past that keeps people interested in seeing live theater. Not being able to see all these plays, I chose the UTEP production of "Macbeth," directed by Chuck Gorden. It’s a play I’d never seen live—I’d only seen the Orson Welles black and white version from the 40s, which had lots of long pauses, and fog and smoke, and scenes taking place in dark settings. The 1971 Roman Polanski version, with the famous Lady Macbeth nude sleepwalking scene, I’d missed—but it seems like it’s worth seeing.
Gorden’s staging of the play was enough to set you back on your heels. Or, as an old buddy used to say, “knock you on your ass.” From the moment you enter the theater you are grabbed by this production’s ambience: From the dissonant music that plays as you take your seat while a fine dust swirls throughout the house, to the final words spoken on stage and the ensuing applause as one lone actor bows out front—this is a show to take in.
I was anxious to hear from the director about his “take” on the staging of the show. This is the essence of the interview that follows. It took place this week in Professor Chuck Gorden’s office located just above the theater box office.
The show continues Friday and Saturday night, 8 p.m., and Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. in the Wise Family Theater on the UTEP campus.
Q: How satisfied are you with the attendance the first week?
A: We had a pretty good house for this production. We’re averaging about 250 patrons a night, which is pretty good. Today, we had an overflow crowd, a high school group for a matinee. Close to 355 people, all high school students. They were a very attentive group.
Q: Isn’t this one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays?
A: This is theoretically the shortest play that he wrote.
Q: What was your running time?
A: It’s about 2:25. (2 hours 25 minutes.)
Q: What can you say about all that dust in the air?
A: That’s part of the aesthetic of the show. What we use for that is a chemical fog. It’s a haze machine. It creates a haze using a chemical that’s non-toxic. And it dissipates quickly.
It’s interesting, the psychological impact it has on people, and they go, “Oh, my gosh—there’s smoke.” They think of it as smoke but it’s actually not.
Q: What is the purpose of this “smoke?”
A: In approaching the work, part of my research led me to several critical sources. One I liked a great deal was by a Polish critic and poet named Jan Kott. He wrote a very seminal work called “Shakespeare, Our Contemporary.” A lot of people have looked at this book, Peter Brooke among others, and Roman Polanski’s production—he referred to it quite heavily.
One of the things he stumbled on was the idea of this play as a nightmare. He said, “It’s the only Shakespeare play where you have around 75 percent of the play happening at night.” And then it’s the one play where the word “sleep” is found the most often.
And based on that, that’s sort of what our design team worked together with me on. “Let’s create this nightmare world on stage.” That’s what we want to depict for the audience. And that’s what we want to welcome them to when they come to this show.
The historical context of Shakespeare’s writing this play was certainly as a cautionary tale at the time. You had the passing of the throne from Elizabeth to James, and the idea of the Gunpowder Rebellion was very fresh in everyone’s mind. It was very much a cautionary tale saying, “We’re going to scare you about the idea of overthrowing a monarchy.”
Q: What about the historical idea of Macbeth killing the king and being this “bad king”?
A: It’s based on Holinshed’s Chronicles. He played fast and loose with the story to please the monarchs. These days the scholars found that Macbeth was probably a pretty good king, for about 15 years anyway. He was overthrown by Malcolm, bringing English forces with him to Scotland. That did happen. The murder, no.
Q: And the use of the witches---
A: Where the witches come into play, it’s tacked on by Shakespeare to please James I, who was a big witch burner. He was Mary Queen of Scots son and himself somewhat immersed in Catholicism. (Witchcraft was) one of the things people said he had a fixation about—this is the King James who edited the King James Bible—but, yeah, he was very much fascinated by witches and was reputed to have burned a great many witches while he was in Scotland.
Q: What about the idea of the witches, in this production, being present throughout?
A: For me, that ties in to Kott’s thesis of this play being a nightmare and, again, the supernatural element. It is also the only play that Shakespeare wrote where the supernatural is out-and-out embraced. “This is truth—this is what it is.” We know that Elizabethans believed in witchcraft. These (the witches) are people that can control destiny and people’s fates much the same way that voodoo is believed in the Caribbean.
I know that other productions have had the witches as a presence. We didn’t necessarily base the choice on that but it kind of makes sense to me. And so we sort of collaboratively, as a team, the characters and I, experimented with, “Where do we want them? Where do we not want them?” It was something we sort of found in rehearsal. They were probably more in the rehearsal process than they were in the final production. But they were still there quite a bit.
Q: Unlike the older versions of the play, with witches as old hags, warts on their noses, etc., you present them as young women provocatively dressed. Why?
A: My feeling tracing what the witches actually do—they’re very seductive creatures. That’s what they do, they seduce Macbeth with this idea of power. It’s a seduction that proves irresistible to him and causes him to cross that moral boundary and commit murder.
I thought, “There’s got to be something seductive about these women, they just can’t be hags.” I did some study on Druids and Celtic cultures and witchcraft as it was perceived in those cultures and they were quite seductive themselves. The rituals were very much based in sexuality and that sort of sensuality. Coming up with those ideas I gave that to our costumier and she kind of ran wild with it. And I thought she came up with a great solution. So I was very happy with it.
Q: In the scene showing the killing of Lady Macduff, you have her surrounded by figures in black hoods and gowns.
A: That was something that came up in pre-production and that is borrowing a little from Polanski because he had the idea that the witches had a coven, a shadowy coven whose faces were not seen by us and who moved around the edges of the scenery.
That’s a very nightmare—well, it’s one of my nightmares. (Laughs) So I went, “Let’s play with that.” It gave us the ability to do some things visually I felt were consistent with the idea of the nightmare. Shakespeare wanted to scare people, and it was much easier to do it with the Elizabethan theater, probably, than today ‘cause we’re saturated with motion pictures and where things are exposed in the most grisly detail.
I felt if we’re going to translate that feeling to a contemporary audience then we’re going to have to meet them on their level. We’re going to have to do some things visually that perhaps aren’t textually there but still capture the essence of what the scene is.
Q: Isn’t it a bit difficult to present a ghost on the stage? I’m thinking particularly of Banquo at the Banquet scene.
A: It is a problem, I think. A ghost in the play. In some theaters, the ones that have expensive, state-of-the-art equipment, I’ve seen actual holographic projections. Which is very nice. But there’s also something distancing about that sort of technology. I wanted to keep it as organic as possible. We found a solution that seemed to work. I like it to be there corporeally, as it were.
Q: A bit surprising is the “Sleepwalking” scene: You had Lady Macbeth sitting down, appearing to wash blood from her hands at an imaginary stream. Why no walking?
A: Part of that was something we arrived at in rehearsal. When we first started working on the scene, she was pretty much all over the stage but there was something very pedantic about it. I felt maybe we’re missing the essence of the scene. They say she’s sleepwalking. Then I started questioning Karen (Moore, who played Lady Macbeth). “Is she really asleep?” I said, “I don’t think she is.” Even the Gentlewoman says her eyes are open but her senses are shut. I said, “This is a woman who, psychologically at least, has been blown sideways through hell. She’s lost everything.” And, on top of that, is the horrible guilt. She makes the greatest transformation, probably more so than Macbeth. It obviously destroys her.
Q: Your use of sword fighting seems fairly extensive. Why is that?
A: Part of that was something I felt pretty strongly about. In this show the Macduff—Macbeth fight, from a fight choreography standpoint, it’s one of those classic ones. I felt if we’re going to stay with this idea of nightmare, it needs to be more of a struggle. And, to me, it’s the closest thing to redemption. This is his chance to die somewhat honorably in battle.
It was pretty rigorous for the two actors, they had to make quite a commitment to it, but they did and I’m very pleased with what they’re doing. We rehearsed that for hours even before the play formally began rehearsals.
Q: At the end of the show, you allow only one actor to take a bow by himself. Why?
A: Nobody’s mentioned it to me yet. I thought about it long and hard and I thought, “If I’ve kept people in their seats and kept them entertained for two hours and 20 minutes -- “And my feeling is this is an ensemble piece. I did feel that Macbeth needed to come out to the center point. But I wanted it to be an ensemble bow. I didn’t want it to be with lines and characters. Because, to me, that synonymous with musical theater which is somewhat antithetical to what this play really is.
This play is—well, it’s hell. To do it properly. And I feel when a company has worked that hard I didn’t want to bring out everybody and make that distinction between small roles, medium roles, large roles. And also I didn’t want to milk applause. That’s a personal feeling of mine—I don’t like to milk the audience for applause.
Q: How do you connect the character of Macbeth to the idea of nightmare?
A: He (Macbeth) is not that different from any of us. He may not be the Aristotelian model of a tragic hero but, yes, I found him very tragic. He’s somebody who, out of his own ambition and his angst, gets caught up in something he wishes he hadn’t.
And I think all of us have gone through that experience and that’s what the universality of the play is. I think that’s something Shakespeare very much wanted to frighten people about.
To me, that is a nightmare.
Paul Geneson is a local writer who has written a book of short stories, "47 Tales of a Lifetime."
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