It was an Election Year. What will politicians do and say to be in power? Take Macbeth, for example. Our Players pared Macbeth down to reveal these Bad to the Bone characters just as they are – raw, ambitious, political, shadowy, dark.
Three of our Players (two of them female) explored the role of Macbeth, as he unravels, literally passing on the mantle in a ceremonial transition. And our three Lady Macbeths also played the three Weird Sisters, raising all sorts of interesting questions about who was actually driving the action, and what was real and what were figments of the Macbeths’ troubled consciences.
This Fall, we also began a new class – Play-Acting for Social Justice. Our Players worked together for 12 weeks to create their own original theatre pieces – works based on a pedagogy of social justice themes expressed with compassion and solution. They explored the ISMS (ageism, classicism, racism, lookism, ableism, etc.) and the PHOBIAS (homophobia, xenophobia, etc.) that create conflict and cause damage – from a two-person altercation … to a global catastrophe.
The resulting show – “O Justice, Where Art Thou? Young Voices of Courage” – wove our Players’ pieces together with the words of Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, and other visionaries.