The Macbeths and the Power of Positive Thinking

Nearly every performance of a Shakespearean play is a "cutting."  Some of this is to manage length.  But as someone who has put in the time with the source texts,  I can say there are things that get cut out of nearly every version -- weird redundancies, comic relief that feels odd to modern audiences, etc.  These are the low hanging fruit for the person making a cutting.  But cutting goes further than that, and can be an art-form in itself.

I have been working with MacBeth, as I had mentioned recently.  I have cut deeply, but hopefully not the unkindest cut of all.

Having read, re-read, and re-re-read (and so) the play, along with watching several film versions in quick succession, I came up with five elements of the play that different versions mix and match.

1) Scottishness
2) imagination
3) the occult
4) infertility -- and it causing homicidal tendencies
5) the psychology of guilt

Every version I have seen leaves some lines emphasized and others hallow.  This is unavoidable as the intellectual space the play takes up is more vast than the conventions of cinema can capture.  Perhaps theater cannot, either.  Such is the genius of Shakespeare, made more evident to me by working so closely with the text.

For example, the plays I've seen that are very, very Scottish leave the "dagger of the mind" speech hallow.  Who cares how imaginative Macbeth is if the play is spun to implies everything that happens in it is driven by Scottish clannishness?  A great enough actor could carve out ethos for the performance of the lines, but it still wouldn't fit with anything else.

To some extent, to make a performance of Macbeth is to choose what you need to lose so that the elements you are most interested in can work. The focus on my cutting is the nature of imagination, and how it can be destabilizing.  It is then set in the modern day with Macbeth working in a corporate-like environment, using the appearance of positive thinking and self promotion (uh, literal self-promotion).

I am removing the bits about the frustrations of infertility leading to homicidal tendencies, which I think is a defensible enough decision for what will be a high school performance.  This makes the removal sound like an easy decision, but it cuts out one of the best bits of the play, Lady Macbeth's lines about having a child:

I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

I also have drastically cut out the Scottishness of what many actors call The Scottish Play.  Macduff's sub-plot is cut to almost nothing.  He is just a generic person who finds King Duncan dead and then fights Macbeth at the end.  I still give Malcolm the last speech of the play, but only to show the reality of Macbeth's failure and that other decisions would probably force me to add lines, and that is something I, on balance, tried to avoid.

I find that restraints can be great aids to creativity.  Even if they don't end up making the product better -- though they usually do just that -- they make the process more enjoyable.  In this case I consciously choose the following restraints, and would recommend them as a fun puzzle for someone working on nearly any Shakespearean play: 1) to add as little additional text as possible 2) re-arrange as little of the text as possible and 3) failing #2, if I needed to add text to the play to take it from other places in Shakespeare.

The biggest addition I make to the play is at the very beginning. I make Macbeth into someone who is listening to a motivational recording, and it is that which powers his imagination to see the witches (weird sisters).  By this logic, Banquo does not see the sisters. The lines Macbeth uses to pump himself up are taken from other Shakespearean plays.  Here is the opening:

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Scene 1
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(In something like a work or office setting.  Macbeth and Banquo at work.)

MACBETH
So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

(Gets up, put in ear buds to do his affirmations.  Another voice, perhaps a recording of a witch, or a witch off stage, says the affirmations, and Macbeth repeats.  Banquo non-verbally responds each time, shaking head and the like, as if to indicate what a dork Macbeth is.)

Voice
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

MACBETH
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Voice
Strong reasons make strong actions.

MACBETH
Strong reasons make strong actions!

Voice
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en

MACBETH
No profit grows where is no pleasure taken!

Voice
I dare do all that may become a man

MACBETH
I dare do all that may become a man!

(Flourish.  Enter witches.  MacBeth can see them.  Banquo cannot.)

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Here is a link to the google doc.

After this beginning, the play unfolds in normal order and, as I said, I lean on cuttings rather than additions, with some characters merged together to save on the number of actors.  The motivational sequence happens again at the beginning of Act 4 before Macbeth sees the witches again.

Also, for the fun of it I have given titles to all five acts based on motivational slogans from our culture. I don't plan on them showing up in the performance, but just a bit of fun for the cast.


Act 1  The Secret to my Success
Act 2  Just Do It
Act 3  Fake It Until you Make It
Act 4  Believe You Can, and You're Halfway There.
Act 5  Never Give Up


This cutting is, first and foremost, a fun game to play.  Secondly, it allows me to work with a director whom I respect, and has served as my first project after leaving a job at a place that I will leave unnamed to protect the innocent.

The meaning of this version comes from a critique of our times.  Delusion, ambition, self-serving justifications -- all are fine as long you sparkle with charisma and show "positivity."  The universe should manifest what you desire. . . or is it that you should be able to manifest upon a passive universe?

Shakespeare had his suspicions about this type of social imagination.