What’s important and complex in Shakespeare plays, is not what it’s written, but what’s left to the interpretation of the director, or even of the public — the ambiguities, the imperfections, that let us imagine the motivations of the characters (as the article points - the motives are clear but not the motivations), and let us perceive their emotions, feel their reactions, mixed with ours.
Exactly what generative AI doesn't let you do.
While Avatar actor Stephen Lang was still in college, he played MacBeth. I brought him news that Birnam Wood had moved, and he drew inspiration from every fiber of my being to deliver his "tale told by an idiot" spiel.
I can still feel the spit hitting my face!
The crowd loved the short five-night run, last time. It made all the papers, tickets sold out, tourists rocked up for it.
Seven actors were injured, in a space that usually saw one injury a year. Six were ruled unavoidable by the fire warden doing the post-assessments.
Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most popular play, cause it’s got sex and blood and poetry all over, a really tight plot, and it’s not too long. It is pretty well guaranteed to fill a theatre. Also, every actor knows the script so you can find a cast in no time.
So if your current play is not selling a lot of tickets and is about to be cancelled, the theatre is going to put on Macbeth right after you to try to make its money back quickly. That’s why thespians hate to hear the name ‘Macbeth’ — because if there’s talk of that play going about, you could be out of a job next week.
Reciting lines from The Two Gentlemen of Verona and A Midsummer Night's Dream is also rumored to be helpful (from the last section).
"For the more athletically inclined, one should exit the theatre, spin around in a circle three times, and spit."
https://broadwaydirect.com/13-theater-superstitions-hallowee...
Or this is a joke on the “curse”?
But basically I don't think those problems are all meant to be solved
Yes, the supernatural events described on stage are very difficult to pull off even with modern effects. But they were impossible with Jacobean setups. And that's kind of the point
There is always a tension between what is seen and spoken in that play. We're meant to get the sense that Macbeth is partly talking himself into his frenzy
Supernatural events happen but they kind of have a bathetic, eye-rolling quality to them, like the prophecy that "Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill / Shall come against him"
Which YEAH, it does, in that Macbeth's enemies construct a bunch of battering rams from the forest timber. You are supposed to groan at that. Magic is way weaker than any of the human beings and their ordinary vices
Speaking generally, as a former theatre professional, using onstage "effects" is less effective than firing the audience's imagination, and inviting them to do the work - which, of course, Jacobean artists were well able to do, and their audiences arguably more prepared to accept. The best plays - and I do think Maccers is among them, although the three productions of it I've been in were mediocre to dire - give huge scope for that.
This was a wonderful article, that nails what's wonderful - and frustrating - about the show.
I’ll see myself out.