Photo credit Sue Kessler
Pictured: Bianca Thompson '19, Ziggy Schulting '18, Katie Jacobsen '18.
Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.
Clearly stressed students are not the only ones losing sleep this week, as Macbeth takes the stage. In a world of witches, war, and madness, Macbeth and his cunning wife will stop at nothing to hold the throne of Scotland. The price of power, however, is greater than they predicted—paranoia, madness, and an army led by the strongest warrior in the land, determined to restore the King’s daughter to her throne.
The Skidmore theater company takes this production to the main stage, in what they call a “gender-bending” rendition of Shakespeare’s play. Director Holly L. Derr explains, “in our production, we complicate questions about the nature of gender, pointing at Shakespeare’s underlying theme and reflecting the way gender functions in our more complicated world.” In a play that features witches and ghosts, Derr also comments on the “pretty cool SFX,” or sound effects, that they use in order to capture those supernatural elements.
With their rendition, the Skidmore company hopes to attack the question that Shakespeare poses in this play: can man control his/her fate? Or are there supernatural powers that dictate the events of our lives? This production will take a variation of these questions and present the effects of fate and society on gender. Go and see Macbeth, as the Skidmore theater company attacks these questions, and hopefully gets some sleep.
The show opens tonight, Friday, November 20, and will be running both this weekend, and the weekend after we return from Thanksgiving break. There will be 8pm shows on Fridays and Saturdays, and then Sunday matinees at 2pm.
