I am currently devising a new version of Shakespeare's Macbeth titled (Crime Scene Detection)
CSD:Macbeth a Forensic Examination.
The cast is Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and 6 witches. I am setting it in a morgue where, at the start, 3 bodies, covered with sheets, are lying on trolleys. This setting frees me from conventional notions of the text and allows me to enter the tale as if it were a folk tale ripe for the re-telling in any form that I sense is theatrical, dramatic and effective.
It will bear no resemblance to anything that the Royal Shakespeare Company or the South Australian Theatre Company might deem 'correct and suitable homage to the Bard'. I intend to rip the story of Macbeth apart and re-assemble it more in the style of Societas Raffaello Sanzio than Bell Shakespeare and I will show it in a warehouse when it is finished!
It is early days yet so this diary will be updated as things develop in the rehearsal room.
The cast is: Macbeth: John Nobbs/ Lady Macbeth: Leah Shelton/ Head Witch: Lisa O'Neill/Witches: Kristen Duffus, Michael Coughlan, Michael Scott, Jane Barber, Helen Smith.
Will write again next week. Jacqui Carroll
Diary Note 2
'Blood will have blood they say'
As I make the work I find that the witches are driving the story (up till now), they know all the text that Macbeth & Lady Macbeth are about to speak, they know the past and the future, they show themselves to have many faces, the principals struggle within this morass...
Macbeth & Lady Macbeth are predestined to follow their paths.....and yet they will fight back, over and over again, trying to gain a foothold, to regain the advantage even as it slips further and further away.
Perhaps the witches will falter, perhaps they'll lose their energy in the face of this onslaught...this is all in the future of the production which drives itself forward while I steer and push and pummel, retreat and advance with the waves of creative energy I am surrounded with.
More after the next rehearsal. (Rehearsals are only once a week at the moment) JC
Saturday, 18 November 2006
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