Directors’ Note
The theater is always an expression of what it means to be alive right now, to be present at this particular moment. No matter which century created it, a play in performance is ultimately concerned with the personal and political issues of the current environment. A play is a high-density magnifying lens through which we can see our own times, our lives, our problems and our assumptions. Macbeth signifies what Macbeth means now.
Shakespeare’s bullet of a play embodies the substantial paradoxes that we seem to be living with on a daily basis. As an audience, via the focusing device of Shakespeare’s intelligence and eloquence, we are allowed access to simultaneous sympathy, dismay and schadenfreude during the journey of the play. These emotions are triggered not only by the seemingly unstoppable trajectory of Macbeth and his wife, but also by the actual state of impermanence that the play implies is the human condition. Macbeth is a ritual full of moments, thoughts, gestures, actions and images that operate not as a slice of real life, but as a way of calling up and exorcising such slippery dangerous states.
The theater is ultimately also about community. In the heat of the shared theatrical experience, an audience becomes its own society. You are here with a roomful of other people. Can you handle that? We are a community of people dealing with one another and challenging each other. The theater is about social systems and how individuals in communities function in concert. Can the planet be shared or does it just belong to me?
