macbeth pre-production experiment

by john lutterbie, ph.d.

ovember 19, 2000

The focus of the experiment today was on the effect of vision, rather the absence of vision, on movement. The experiment was based on an argument that one reason for the type of movement in Japanese Noh Theatre is the restricted vision imposed on the actors by the masks. While I was dubious about this claim I was interested in determining the effect of limited vision on movement, because I am interested in defining a movement style for the production that works to lower the center of gravity, either by shifting the actor's cultural center (where in the body they tend to lead from, which in the West tends to be from the chest, unlike Eastern styles of movement tend to be more rooted in the earth,) or by literally moving the center of gravity closer to the ground.

The first improvisation involved three limitations. One, all of the performers were blindfolded. Two, each performer was asked to select a line from Macbeth. Three, a tape of Phillip Glass's Glasswork was playing. The actor's were asked to respond to all or some of the limitations as they moved through the space. The improvisation lasted about thirty minutes. Findings: To my surprise, one of the first things one of the performers said after putting on the blindfold was: "This feels so good!" I had expected a greater degree of anxiety about the loss of vision. What I found was that not being able to see was liberating. The same performer felt that being without the use of sight was liberating and permitted movement choices that would never have been made if they were able to see and be seen. Indeed, from my knowledge of the performer, there was a freer exploration of the body, movement and other performers than would normally have happened.

Another performer was liberated in a different way. In this case, the absence of sight removed a dependence on the visual to determine the reality of the exploration. Instead, the actor found that the line, the movement and the music allowed for the imagination to create a place. These responses are extremely useful, given where I am at the moment. One, it suggests that using blindfolds in the rehearsal process may be particularly useful in a) freeing the actors in their investigation of the text from a degree of self-consciousness, b) it may indeed encourage a relocating of the center of movement, although I did not see or record any such shift in this experiment, and c) it may be useful in helping the actors define the place of the production. The latter needs some expansion.

ellen terry as lady macbeth

Director's Thoughts on December 11, 2000

I think we need to think of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as two people passionately in love who make a choice that destroys them. The problem in the beginning may be that they are trying to help each other too much, thinking they are creating a world (reality that becomes/is a simulacra) that fits their sense of themselves and the place in the world that will provide them with the security and "good life" that they "deserve." Ironically, this is precisely what kills them. Macbeth has this speech in Act V that capsulizes it all for me (at this point):

I have lived long enough. My way of lifejIs fall'n into the sere, /the yellow leaf,kAnd that which should accompany old age,/As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends/I must not look to have; but, in their stead/Curses not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath,/Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk l

He knows already that whether he lives or dies, he has lost. I think that at this point he is ready to die, or would be were it not for his love of Lady Macbeth. When he hears of her death, his death/life is meaningless and he is ready to die: "sound and fury signifying nothing." Life is meaningless and we need to identify with him at this point. When he kills Siward it is an act of frustration, anger at the loss, an act of an exhausted man who just wants to stop but is goaded into one last action.

When MacDuff appears, Macbeth is willing to give up, but the thought of being paraded in front of the crowds -- extending his life in that way -- makes death so much more attractive. He knows he is going to die, and I think he is ready to embrace it. It is kind of like Clinton, who is running around the world trying to create a legacy that is doomed to evade him because he couldn't keep his penis in his pants. Macbeth doesn't want to die an ignominious death and so dies in battle. He fights valiantly, but his heart isn't in it. Even though we will shortly welcome Malcolm and be happy for MacDuff's vengence of his family, we must still feel pangs at the death of Macbeth -- a tall order, given his reputation as an evil being. The reality he wants to perpetuate, the simulacra, fails because he cannot get people to believe in it. Because they don't believe in his reality, he fears them (because he knows it is artificial) and so tries to destroy them -- first Duncan, then Banquo, then MacDuff's family. When these murders fail to guarantee/to secure his reality, it crumbles of its own weight and he with it.