Mac Beth | Boston University CFA School of Theatre Program Book

Mac Beth

WRITTEN BY ERICA SCHMIDT DIRECTED BY GIGI JURAS

February 27 - March 3, 2022 DAVID COPELAND BLACKBOX THEATRE, CFA 354 855 COMMONWEALTH AVE

Artistic Team Director Assistant Director Stage Manager Dramaturg Assistant Dramaturg Scenic/Props Designer Sound Designer Costume Designer Productions Assistant Fight Director Production Manager Props Assistant Movement Director Fight Captain Lighting Consultant Photography

Gigi Juras Gaby Tovar Maya Scott-Luib Edward Sturm Lola Kennedy Anika Reichelt Jennie Gorn Daniel Vigil Shai Vaknine Jeb Burris Annie Kao Alison Donahue Emma Weller Maddie Karotz Isaak Olson Sarah Coleman

Cast Macduff Macbeth Lady Macbeth Witch 1 Witch 2 Witch 3 Banquo/Seyton

Emma Weller Maddie Karotz Mya Ison Abigayle Scobee Arianne Banda Sarah Coleman Sydney Meyer

Dramaturgical Note When news outlets covered the “Slenderman Stabbing” in 2014, the story captured the popular imagination. Two twelve-year-old girls, celebrating a birthday at home in suburban Wisconsin, lured a third friend into the woods with a game of hide and seek. At the agreed-upon moment, one of the girls took a fiveinch kitchen knife from her waistband and proceeded to stab her friend 19 times. The young perpetrators had planned the attack for months, whispering code-words on the bus school, all with a single aim: to become “proxies” of the spooky and faceless internet character called Slenderman. After the stabbing, the two began to travel on foot, attempting a 200-mile journey to Nicolet National Forest where they believed that Slenderman would meet them and welcome them to his mansion hidden among the trees.

The girls never made it to Slenderman’s mansion. They were arrested only a few hours later; their young victim, who remarkably survived, had been found by a cyclist and taken to the hospital. Although apprehended, in the hands of the two adolescents, internet fiction had become reality. In a certain way, the girls really were proxies of Slenderman. Something about this most modern instance of violence and betrayal called to mind Macbeth for writer/director Erica Schmidt. Perhaps nothing but the words of Shakespeare could give voice to that “fell purpose” which led two twelve-year-olds to such an act. Thus Shakespeare’s bloody tale came to be told by adolescent girls—transfixed by the Bard rather than Slenderman—and came to be called Mac Beth.

Needless to say, William Shakespeare’s Macbeth has long captured our attention. Written in 1606, the original play responded readily to its context—in England, a Scottish king had just been crowned who had a keen interest in witchcraft and had, the year before, endured a major assassination attempt. Theatres have augmented and adapted the text ever since. From film to literature, the play has permeated into our cultural consciousness—whatever comes to your mind when you think of a witch, for example, owes much to Macbeth. No matter the context, this story of “vaulting ambition” seems never to go out of style.

In her adaptation, Erica Schmidt leaves Scotland behind, setting Mac Beth in “America—where school violence is so common as to be horrifyingly banal.” Notably, that school violence which we are so used to is perpetrated only rarely by young women. In fact, if we were to adapt Shakespeare every time that a group of young men committed a stabbing, we would never have time to perform anything else.

Yet the violence of girls emerges from a particular place. In her essay “Out Came the Girls,” Alex Mar writes, “to be an adolescent girl is, for many, to view yourself as desperately set apart, powerfully misunderstood.” One has only to look to Abigail Williams and the Salem witch trials or the case of Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker to see the long legacy of young women who are drawn out to the woods, enamored by the language of the occult, and fulfilled by the intimacy of another girl. It is a legacy only occasionally inclined toward violence, but one that surely includes the horrifying actions of the two twelve-year-old girls in Wisconsin. Their attack resonates with this most extraordinary aspect of adolescent girlhood, just as it resonates with the language of Shakespeare.

When the young characters of this play are drawn into the woods like so many girls before them, Macbeth takes on new meaning. How could it not?

Edward Sturm

Upcoming Projects Everybody March 1 - 3 CFA 109 | 820 Commonwealth Ave

by Branden Jacob Jenikins | Directed by Melisa Pereyra and Jeb Burris Free admission; limited seating.

The Legend of Georgia McBride March 25 - 27 Studio ONE, CFA 104 | 855 Commonwealth Ave

by Matthew Lopez | Directed by Kolton Bradley Admission is free.

Murder Ballad March 5 - 7

CFA 105| 855 Commonwealth Ave

by Julia Jordan and Julia Nash| Directed by Shamus Free admission; limited seating.

For more details, visit www.bu.edu/cfa/theatre/season