Founder and Director Deborah Dennison and The Arden Players will present a rough hewn, nationalistic, and testosterone-driven production of the Scottish play this month at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe. Employing Scots dialect, a warrior code, and Icelandic eddas as incidental music, this Macbeth is one that reflects the historical figure of Macbeth found in Shakespeare’s source for the play, Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577). King Duncan is a ruthless, less than innocent ruler and Macbeth is a heroic man whose actions and imagination lead to his inevitable downfall. The witches are merely the exterior mirror reflection to the main character’s inner ambition, fears, and subsequent psychological torment.
Written upon the ascent of James VI of Scotland as the first Stuart king of England James I, Macbeth (1606) was the first play written after the Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605. It was also the first play Shakespeare wrote after a work he composed based on the current unrest in England over the secession, The Tragedy of Gowrie (1604). This drama was performed twice, the second time before the king, and was immediately banned. Thus, Shakespeare’s Scottish play is a conservative and orthodox response to the installation of the Stuart Dynasty that reassures the nervous monarch that ruthless and harsh justice is appropriate in a world “out of joint.” Furthermore, Macbeth caters to King James’s love of witchcraft and his belief in the “Banquo Myth.” James firmly believed this myth that held that the historical Banquo was a direct ancestor and a man of good faith rather than the reality of Banquo who in actuality was a co-conspirator with the historical Macbeth in the murder of Duncan.
As with all Arden Players productions, Macbeth will focus on the poetry and the imagery of the author with the goal of making Shakespeare accessible to the entire audience. Finally, the backdrop to this production is the violent and bloody medieval world in which characters are defined and revealed by their actions and not by their intentions. There is much that could be learned from this production by our contemporary politicians as our country enters its sixth year of armed engagement in Iraq.
The Arden Players Macbeth will be presented at El Museo Cultural (1615 Paseo de Peralta) from March 28 to April 13, 2008 on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 P.M. and Sundays at 2 P.M. On April 5, 2008, there will be a special Saturday matinee with a post-performance discussion of the play with cast and local scholars and teachers.
