MACBETH
(an eco political adaptation of William Shakespeare's
play)
Translation,
Design and Direction : Chandradasan
Text:
by William Shakespeare
Music : Bijibal M
Light Design: Giresh Menon
Art: Ashanthan
Duration of the play: 90 mts.
Macbeth seems to be getting
more and more contemporary all the time. Many recent Macbeth productions
have used the play's focus on the lust for power and issues of sexual
identity as a cue to drastically depart from the traditional characters,
setting and time frame.
This production underlines
the blind ambition and lust for power of a tyrant driven by insecurity
and guilt to compound crime after crime, to grow as a bloodthirsty autocrat
and suppressor. The text by William Shakespeare is used as a pretext
to analyze and study the phenomena of tyranny and autocracy in a political
reading of the play. Macbeth the dark protagonist is the representative,
symbol and image of tyranny impersonalized who is repeating in many
forms and operational modality all over the world through ages, unleashing
murder, ambition, treachery and cruelty.
To behead the oppressor is
the right of the people. Unless the people move from the stagnant deep
rooted positions Macbeth will continue to rule on. So thus the movement
of Birnam wood becomes the movement of the people with an eco political
angle. This production tries to engage itself in a dialogue with the
audience and tries to initiate them to move and finally join the company
of Macduff and others to reestablish the rule of consensus and social
justice in the final climax.
The role of the three witches are substituted by three musicians who
is present on the central acting area throughout the performance, who
sings, renders the lines of the witches and other minor characters rather
dispassionately. Also the character of Lady Macbeth is changed to suppressed
and weeping presence that is tortured and neglected by Macbeth in his
relentless pursuit for power. The production does not try to cash the
spectacular possibilities of the text and rather tries to move to the
distilled essence of the text and its meaning. The acting style is to
invoke extensive emotional energy and power in a struggle by the actors
with the time, space, the set aesthetical concepts, styles, and methodology
of contemporary theatre practice.
This dark play about death
and sleep is given a simple narrative form in an acting space designed
as an elongated "T"- an elongated thrust- where the audience
can have a close viewing and possibility of a dialogue is opened. Talking
to their face, looking onto their eyes, physically touching and making
them to sing and provoking them to join them in the final action is
attempted. With a distinctive dark design, a ruthless lonely Macbeth,
haunted Lady Macbeth and power struggle, the production tries for a
political statement.
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