Next week, the theater department is putting on the annual fall play, That Scottish Play: The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. The show is being performed on Friday, November 11, and Saturday, November 12 at 7:00 pm. Ticket costs will be eight dollars for students and $10 for adults.
The story of That Scottish Play: The Tragedy of Macbeth follows a general named Macbeth who is told by a trio of witches that he will be King of Scotland and then proceeds to manipulate and murder his way to the throne.
The original title of this play is simply Macbeth, but director Matt McKay changed it in order to modernize the material for students.
“As the title hopefully suggests, it’s not just a straight-up boring version of a Shakespearian play. Instead, we have made some minor tweaks to make things funnier and make the play more fun and accessible to the student population,” McKay said. “That is one of the major reasons we chose to do this play: to dispel the stereotype that Shakespeare is boring, and you can’t understand it.”
The dialect used in this play can be difficult to grasp, so McKay has been working with the student actors to help them understand the content more, providing them with time to translate the Shakespearean language into modern-day English.
“When the students know what they are saying, they can start to add the tone of voice, body language, and other elements of communication that also carry the message,” McKay said. “It all starts with a little vocabulary work, like teachers have been emphasizing since elementary school.”
The play choice was a bit unexpected to actor sophomore Kennedi Beauchamp, who is playing the first witch, the leader of three witches who tell Macbeth he is going to be king.
“It definitely came as a surprise to us all for such a deep play to be chosen but once McKay started changing things and giving [the actors] creative liberties within certain aspects I think we all began to love our show because it’s our own,” Beauchamp said.
Senior Hope Flowers is playing Lady Macbeth, one of the lead roles. Flowers describes the play as complex.
“[The play is] very tragic, a lot of people manipulating to get what they want and not really thinking about the consequences before they do it,” Flowers said. “There’s a lot of symbolism and deeper meaning,”
Flowers is looking forward to everyone’s preparation paying off.
“I’m so excited because we’ve been working throughout the whole summer,” Flowers said. “We’ve had our lines . . . trying to memorize them.”
McKay strives to make this play exceed an audience’s expectations.
“We want people to appreciate the depth of Shakespeare’s play, but also the skill actors and crew demonstrate in making this play come to life,” McKay said. “I’m looking forward to usurping expectations and hearing the enjoyment from the audience.”
McKay encourages everybody to come out and give this production a chance.
“You think Shakespeare’s boring? Give us the chance to prove you wrong,” McKay said.
