Middle School Macbeth

Tomorrow my current Middle School residency comes to an end with our culminating performance of Macbeth. I've gotta say, there are moments when I watch my wee ones saying the lines and I suddenly flash back to the smelly room with the horrible grey carpet at Smith, and all those exciting, alive moments you all found when we were working on that play. I keep remembering NITS colleagues playing the various roles and it always makes me smile. Jen-you are still my Duncan!

Since we were talking a while back about fitting more kids in our plays to increase participation, I thought I'd share how I managed to get 50 kids into this production. I split the major roles to ensure that no child had more than 50 lines of text to memorize. (We had five weeks to put the whole thing together--including tech and auditions. yikes.) We've got 5 Macbeths, 3 Lady Macbeths, and 2 Macduffs. But I still had 12 kids who needed roles, so I created a prologue filled with "Ghost Soldiers." Why are they ghosts? Because it's cool to be a ghost, and it was an easier sale than simply saying "you have these two lines." So I made up all kinds of military ranks (my favorite of which is 'Subaltern') and added the prefix "Ghost." In the prologue, the Ghost Soldiers speak text from the play--mostly the witches' prophecies and other bits of advice that people give Macbeth. Add dramatic lighting and creepy music, and Voila! "Was that the best Ghost Soldier Prologue you've ever seen in a production of Macbeth?" the Ghost Ensign asked me the other day. "Yes," I responded truthfully. I will not be there when she cracks open an unedited copy of the play, but it's going to be rough.

We also had an effective tech project I'll share in case anyone is in need of giving tech kids a project. I made them go through the script and seek out interesting images and words. They then drew pictures based on what they'd found "full of scorpions is my mind," "a moving grove" "the charmed pot" "look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it." And one boy drew a skull wearing a crown with eyes filled with FLAME. It was not from the text, but he was super-excited by it, and I was too. Then they scaled up their drawings onto butcher paper, cut out the patterns, traced them onto black fabric, cut those out, and finally glued them on to banners. I sewed dowels into either end, and we hung them for our set. (You can sort of see them in the picture.) I'm skimming over the day when I had to help them to create images that would work in silhouette, but overall, it was an easy project and a cheap way to fill a large space. (thank you $1/yard fabric table at Wal-Mart!)

Hope you are all well. Welcome Trish! (sorry it took me so long to get your email to Amanda, but I'm delighted that you are here. I'm still bummed that I didn't get assigned to help with the residency at your school, but I hope you'll tell us all about it here.)