Unit 4- Robyn : Unit 4: Question 6- My Production

WEEK 6 – YOUR PRODUCTION

RESEARCH: Research your own Shakespeare play: Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, Measure for Measure. What is the play about? When was it first performed? Find a contemporary production of the play you can get an idea of and research it in terms of concept, style, design, casting. Give some attention to your own character and their role in the play.

MacBeth - William Shakespeare

What is the play about?- THE PLOT

The play is set in Scotland and begins with three witches meeting with Macbeth, a Scottish nobleman, who is currently fighting a huge, important battle. Once the battle is over, Macbeth and his best friend Banquo stumble across the three witches, who give them three predictions; Macbeth will become the Thane of Cowdor and The King of Scotland and that Banquo's descendants will become Kings too. Banquo thinks the suggestions are silly and laughs at them, whereas Macbeth becomes excited by them and intrigued. Soon after their meeting, King Duncan, makes Macbeth the Thane of Cawdor for his bravery during the battle, making Macbeth even more excited about the witches. He writes to his wife, Lady Macbeth- who is just as excited as he is.

A messenger comes and tells Lady Macbeth that King Duncan will be visiting her at the Macbeth castle and she invokes bad and evil spirits to help her kill him. Macbeth is persuaded to murder Duncan by his wife and later stabs him to death. When everyone finds out Duncan has been murdered, they are distraught and disgusted. Duncan's two sons flee Scotland as they are worried someone will kill them next as they are the King's sons. No one in Scotland is sure who killed Duncan but Macbeth is made King.

Now that Macbeth has become King, he knows that the witches second prediction has become true. But he fears that the third prediction will become true as well and Banquo's descendants will become Kings, so he hires murderers to kill Banquo and his son. But the plan fails; they kill Banquo but his son escapes. Macbeth then thinks he is going mad because he sees Banquo's ghost and it haunts him- he receives more predictions from the witches. Macbeth begins to lose it becoming ruthless and gets the whole family of Macduff's (an important lord) murdered. Macbeth thinks he is safe now but the witches prophecies start to become true one by one and Lady Macbeth cannot stop thinking of Duncan, becomes deranged and dies. A large army marches to Macbeth's castle and he is killed by Macbeth. Malcolm, one of Duncan's sons, arrives home and is crowned King. Order is restored.

When was Macbeth first performed?

Macbeth was first performed during the early 1600s. It is said that Macbeth was first performed for King James I in August 1606. But it was first recorded being performed at the Globe in 1611.

The conditions of Macbeth weren't how they are now, there were very minimal props and set. There may have been a few chairs and possibly a table. But there were no fancy lights, set design and sound effects like modern theatre. It was performed in very basic conditions. probably just a platform, and all male actors in costumes. The men playing the men roles and young boys playing the children and women roles. Theatre was a popular form of entertainment.

King James I

Contemporary Version of Macbeth

Macbeth directed by Iqbal Khan- Clips Online

Concept: The play was obviously created to be very modern. This play looked amazing from what i saw. What i really enjoyed were the witches and how they used music and song to talk as their magic to talk to the character Macbeth, similarly to what we are doing in our version of the play. Also, music is a important part in their version, like ours, they played music in the background of many scenes and it helped to set the atmospheres. The scene with Porter is created to be very funny and almost stand up comedy. The character uses modern ad-libs in this scene about Trump about Brexit and other themes, relatable to today. This kept the play relatable as they are topics we are living through currently. Obviously Shakespeare's original Othello did not have our modern day themes, such as; Trump and Brexit, but it was a choice the director had made in this version to keep the play relatable and modern. When I watched parts of this play and researched about it, I found many similarities to what we are doing in our version of Macbeth.

Style/Design: The style of the play was very modernised. They used a lot of physical theatre and physical foreshadowing. It was really interesting. The style of the set was very extravagant. There were many props used as a symbolised of something or props to create an effect of an emotions. For example, the witches would be in black and they were always there kind of luring and influencing what was happening in the scenes. The use of puppetry was amazing! Once Macbeth had killed characters off, the witches would have them and Macbeth and the audience could see this. The witches would hold dead Banquo and haunt Macbeth with it, it gave the whole show a real mysterious, creepy effect. Pieces of material were used in the play and created an amazing image. The set and the design of the play was incredible and really enjoyable to watch and the images created were just fabulous!

Casting: I think the actors that were casted were a really good choice. I feel like the roles fitted them appropriately from what i have seen. I think all of the cast had skills in physical theatre- especially the witches. For Khan's vision of the play, he would have need very physical fit actors to portray his creation. The witches, seemed to be quite flexible and I think the casting for the witches fitted very well. All the actors from the videos I watched were very strong performers and there wasn't a weakest link i felt. One of my characters, Donalbain was played by Kerry Gooderson (who also played Fleance and Young Macduff). I liked this because the male characters were played by a female. This related to our all female cast and our views we wanted to portray. There weren't any videos that I could watch of her acting but from a few photos I saw that she wasn't playing the characters as stereotypical 'men'. It looked like she was just herself playing the character. This made me think of our aim in our version of Macbeth. The cast was quite small from what i can tell, only with 13 members so my other two roles, being the murderer and Siward, were not played. Which I found interesting, perhaps Khan, had them as part of an ensemble moment- where the whole cast played the murderer- similar to how we do but with the witches being the ensemble. I really am intrigued by this play and would love to go and see it performed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quqFPmkM_J4 -- AUDIENCE REACTIONS TO THE PLAY