Shakespeare’s tragedies need to be told for today’s world. It’s time for their female voices to be brought to the foreWhen you’re a freelance director and you’re given a play to consider, you ask yourself a series of questions. Do the story and form interest me? Do I want to bring this text to life for this time, place and audience? Am I the right person for this job? Does it chime with the kind of work I want to be making, and the way I want to make it? (Obviously, unless you’re rich, you also have to figure out whether or not you can afford to turn down work, even if the answer to all of the previous questions is “no”). When I was asked about directing a double bill of Othello and Macbeth, two of the most famous plays in the English language, my answers to these questions were a kaleidoscope of yeses and nos, given vehemence by various expletives.These plays are badass. They’ve got sword fights, final reckonings and mortals cursing hell and heaven for their tragic fate. And the language is poetry. The characters talk unashamedly and viscerally about love, sex, yearning, triumph and pain, and that’s the kind of theatre that does it for me. debbie tucker green, Alice Birch, Lauren Yee, Edward Albee, Sarah Kane, Enda Walsh – I’m a sucker for a playwright who can send your heart soaring in one sentence and cut it out of you with the next. Continue reading…
Via: Something wicked: why I mashed up Macbeth and Othello
Categories: English News