Macbeth to be performed at LSU Nov. 15 by British Troupe

When: Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007, 8 p.m.

Where: LSU Union Theater, Raphael Semmes Rd., Baton Rouge

Cost: $7 - $15.75

Age limit: All ages

Description: Five British actors coming to Baton Rouge from the London theater world will take on the 27 characters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, one of the Bard’s most popular plays, on Thursday, November 15 at 8 pm in the LSU Union Theater, for one performance only.

The British troupe is Actors from the London Stage, an international touring company of professionals who normally work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, the Globe Theatre, or other major British companies but who are currently touring the U.S. for a 10-week season.

The company was formed 32 years ago by British theater professionals, including Star Trek’s Patrick Stewart. The actors prepare in England and then arrange their U.S. tour from their main office at the University of Notre Dame.

This production of Macbeth cuts the play to its essentials and focuses on the human emotions that should make Shakespeare’s shortest play such an intense experience. Skipping the usual cauldrons, dry-ice fog, rubber snakes, and masks that often distract from the play’s power, the production uses minimal props and costumes. The focus is then on Shakespeare’s language, which creates a threatening, unstable world far more powerfully than even digital technology can project on the screen.

With only Shakespeare’s magnificent language to boost them, the actors get to the heart of a play that really deals with the ambitions and temptations common to everyone. Actress Charlotte Allam, an actress from Surrey, England, has six roles, for example, and Dan Winter has seven.

"It's quite challenging and it requires a lot of responsibility," said Allam. "We don't rely on sets or costumes or music. It's really all about the story, unlike any Macbeth performance (students) have ever seen."

The troupe also has an education role that’s as important as their performing. Over the week of the production the actors will visit numerous classes and groups throughout LSU. Like the Globe Theatre staff who worked with local teachers this June, Actors from the London Stage believes you can’t understand any play unless you first get on your feet and act some of it out.

In an NPR interview actors Chris Donnelly and Dan Winter observed that Shakespeare’s plays “were made to be played before they were made to be studied. . . . Page to stage – that’s what we do.” Most English teachers have students study the themes of the play, but “you can’t act a theme,” and getting into character makes students come to grips with the meaning of the language and what a character or scene is all about. Sometimes it’s the classes with the least experience with Shakespeare that get the most excited: “you get a real burst, sometimes more from the ones who have never done it and have no (previous) interest.”

Despite its reputation among theater folk for bad luck, Macbeth has always been lucky in attracting audiences. Shakespeare’s striking portraits of the ambitious Macbeth and his fearsome wife, both sinking deeper into evil and then watching their own misdeeds devour them, have struck deep chords with audiences for five hundred years. And his portrait of justice inexorably crushing this evil is somber and realistic, unlike the usual Hollywood treatment. Add to this sensational scenes – the witches, of course, and the sudden appearance of Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s banquet – and you’ve got sure-fire theater.

Swine Palace produced Macbeth in Fall 2004, and Patrick Stewart is currently playing the title role in London and moving it to New York next February. The play has been filmed by such greats as Orson Welles and Roman Polanski and often adapted and modernized. But the original play’s concentration – this production lasts about two and a quarter hours – and its heady mix of murder, witchcraft, and memorable poetry mean that it’s performed frequently worldwide.

The London Stage actors believe that “in this age of computer games and the TV and this world of celebrity, actually we still crave live action.” People want “sharing with people instead of TV” as members of a live theater audience. They compare live theater to the kind of group participation and fan-player rapport found in a football game, something people in south Louisiana know well.

Locally the visit is sponsored by the Louisiana Shakespeare Project, an initiative focused on advancing the teaching, performance, scholarship, and appreciation of Shakespeare and the Renaissance at LSU and in Louisiana. Led by LSU English Department faculty members, the Project won a Louisiana Board of Regents Grant to fund the visit and has recently formed a partnership with London’s Globe Theatre to improve teaching in Louisiana’s schools.

LSU will be hosting Actors from the London Stage in their performance of "Macbeth" at 8 p.m. Thursday, November 15, in the LSU Union Theatre. Tickets are $12.75 for general admission and $7 for students. Tickets will be available at the Union Box Office, the Reilly Theatre Box Office or on line at www.uniontheater.lsu.edu. An additional $3.00 per ticket is charged if purchased on the internet.