Psych Drama at the Museum of Science!
The classic presented
like never before
in the
Charles Hayden Planetarium!
THURSDAY, JUNE 15 | 7:30PM
THURSDAY, JULY 20 | 7:30PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17 | 7:30PM
Directed by Dr. Wendy Lippe, Macbeth was a fully reimagined immersive 3-D audiovisual experience. Using full-spectrum binaural panning and featuring original full dome visuals created by the Museum’s own planetarium team, we brought the story to life around the listener. With its globally inspired soundscape, this production of Macbeth also celebrated the timelessness of diversity in its creation and performance.
Delve deeply into the psyches of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as they navigate their internal struggle between fear and desire, preservation, and power.
Download the Digital Program Here:
| digital_program__macbeth_at_the_boston_museum_of_science.docx.pdf |
A Note from the Director:
Tonight’s adaptation is an 80-minute abridgment that maintains the skeletal story of the original play while focusing on and delving into the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The goal of this production is to heighten your awareness of, and perhaps your feelings about, the Macbeths' internally conflicted minds…while simultaneously maintaining the urgency and immediacy of the action of the play. I call this adaptation a "Macbethian Mindscape”. Of note is that all of the language, every single word of this adapted production, is from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, though revised and remixed.
As a psychologist, director, producer, actress, and human living in these very difficult times, what inspired me to create this Macbethian Mindscape adaptation focused on the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? I hope my director’s note will shed some light on the answer to that question.
I think we are seeing an increased fascination with Shakespeare's Macbeth across the globe because there is something about this text that speaks to the current exacerbation of the polarization of our world, and the footprint of disconnection and paranoia that the pandemic has left us with. I think we are returning to this play over and over again in our attempt to master and work through a world in which we have become alarmingly divided and polarized… because we have a dramatically reduced capacity for tolerating and managing complex, contradictory thoughts and feelings - otherwise known as ambivalence, or what many refer to as "mixed feelings."
And Shakespeare’s original text has many different types of ambivalence in it, including the tension between urges to commit murder and conscience warning against it. But I think the power of the immediacy and urgency of the action of the play is one of a number of factors that can create an interesting dilemma for us –I think the exciting urgency of the action lessens how much we experience the Macbeths struggling with their ambivalence, specifically with regard to their conscience. And when we don't feel their connection to their conscience and feelings of guilt, I think we also empathize less with their human capacity to feel anxiety, depression, dread, and the pain of loss. As a result, we have a tendency to villainize these characters, rather than humanize and identify with them, even if just a little bit. So, I think the call of the Macbeth text, at this moment in time, in the world we are living in, is about our need to reclaim and feel the dualities and complexities of the human condition that exist within all of us, and even within Shakespeare's characters, Macbeth and lady Macbeth.
Let me say more about ambivalence because it is at the heart of this adapted production. Being ambivalent is being able to hold dualities or hold contradictions, in our minds and in our feelings, rather than being uni-dimensional, and holding just one thought, or one feeling, or one point of view. Psychologists who practice psychotherapy have long understood the importance of helping their clients become aware of, tolerate, and manage contradictory thoughts and feelings. Theory articles and books, as well as
clinical case studies discussing ambivalence have been published for decades. But to my surprise, it's only in the last few years that we have quantitative empirical research support for the idea that being ambivalent is a good thing. We have had quantitative empirical research saying that being ambivalent is a bad thing, but now we have research demonstrating the many benefits of being ambivalent which include: improved decision-making processes, more balanced and accurate judgment, reduced cognitive bias, better problem-solving, increased creativity, increased adaptability and increased receptivity to other people's perspectives. Wow, we really need that in our world right now, don’t we?
So, being ambivalent or holding contradictory thoughts and feelings in our minds is a good thing; BUT it does not necessarily mean we can manage that ambivalence well by finding an adaptive and healthy solution. In other words, what are we going to DO when we have these tensions between opposing thoughts and feelings, and what do Macbeth and Lady Macbeth do or fail to do to manage their opposing thoughts and feelings?
There are many kinds of dualities in Shakespeare's Macbeth, but for our adaptation, we are primarily focusing on the ambivalent feelings of dark urges and conscience, and the question of whether an adaptive compromise can be found. And though ambivalent language is no doubt in Shakespeare’s play, the Macbeths certainly do not manage the tension between their dark urges and their conscience well. Macbeth goes on a protracted murder rampage and Lady Macbeth kills herself out of guilt and remorse.
Furthermore, though ambivalent language capturing the inner tension between dark urges and conscience is in the original play, do we really feel it? Do we really believe that tension is there? I don't think so. And as I said earlier, I think, amongst other factors, it's because of the compelling urgency and immediacy of the action of the play that we get swept up in. How many times have you seen a Macbeth production where you really believed that the Macbeths could possibly reconsider and go in the other direction? Not commit murder? Never. The play moves with such haste, and we get carried away so quickly, as the Macbeths do, in their passionate desire for power, that we never really believe, despite what they say, that things might turn out differently than they do. Even though Macbeth is like, "Well, Duncan is kind of a great guy, maybe I shouldn’t do this", we don’t believe him. And do we really feel and believe how Lady Macbeth gets to the point of precipitously falling off of a cliff of guilt and remorse, and killing herself? I don't think there is enough time and space in the original play for these internal conflicts to emotionally land for us.
There are a couple of other interesting facts that shed light on why we might not have enough time and space in the original play to have the Macbeths' competing thoughts and feelings really land for us emotionally. It is widely accepted that Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in the form in which we have it today, is not in fact the full play that Shakespeare wrote for King James the 1st. We don’t know how the abridgment came to be, but Macbeth is shorter than any of Shakespeare’s other tragedies… and by a long shot. And though Macbeth and Lady Macbeth change so dramatically over the course of the play, the time that passes from the beginning to the end of the play is thought by some to be one week, and others to be a few weeks to several weeks.
In 1916, Freud asked “In so short a period of time, what could turn the hesitating, ambitious man into an unbridled tyrant, and his steely-hearted instigator into a sick woman gnawed by remorse?" Freud added, "Events crowd upon us in the tragedy with breathless haste." Freud discussed how the short period of time covered in the play makes it impossible for us to understand the change in the characters of Macbeth and his wife. There is simply not enough time and space for us to have a felt sense of the complexity of what their minds go through and how they transform. By contrast, Freud described how in Holinshed's Chronicle (1577), from which Shakespeare took the plot of Macbeth, ten years pass between the murder of Duncan (by which Macbeth becomes king) and his further misdeeds. It is not until after this lapse of time that the change begins in Macbeth. Thus, in Holinshed’s Chronicle we do have the space and time for the Macbeth's to meaningfully grapple with their ambivalent thoughts and feelings.
As Freud continued to try to make sense of Mac and Lady Mac's changes in such a short time and with so much haste, he was intrigued by Ludwig Jekel’s hypothesis that perhaps Shakespeare intended for Mac and Lady Mac to be considered as one character, one mind. If we think about Mac and Lady Mac combined to be one character, we can imagine feeling a more three-dimensional ambivalence, an intrapsychic conflict within their combined mind that would feel more real. For example, if the Macbeths were combined to be one character, I think it would make more emotional sense to us when Lady Macbeth becomes overwhelmed by guilt and remorse and takes her own life.
Along these lines, many have described a critical change in the Macbeths' relationship –where in the beginning of the play, Macbeth expresses hesitation and conscience, and Lady Macbeth far less as the instigator of Duncan’s murder. And then later in the play, Macbeth becomes the instigator of many more murders, with a dramatic reduction in his conscience. But then Lady Macbeth becomes the holder of conscience and guilt, and expresses it in her sleep-walking scene and with her subsequent suicide.
In our Mindscape adaptation, the focus on ambivalence and internal conflict introduces Lady Mac’s conscience much earlier on in the play via one of the three mind Whisperers; this same mind Whisperer repeats and echoes Lady Mac’s references to the baby that she and Macbeth have lost. "I have given suck and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe thst milks me." One interpretation of the Macbeths’ extreme ambition, and Macbeth's willingness to kill Macduff’s babies, is that that the Macbeths are driven by the pain and loss they feel over the death of their own baby and their subsequent infertility. So, we hope the mind Whisperers, particularly the Whisperer of conscience, which also reminds Lady Macbeth and Macbeth of their own painful loss, help to make Lady Mac feel a bit more like a three-dimensional character in her own right.
We also attempt to create a more extreme and painful conflict between Mac and Lady Mac that emphasizes the break in their union. The violence of their conflict juxtaposed with the music of utter silence, followed by a mournful soundscape, is intended to bring you right into the Macbeths' hearts and minds as the two characters have a very definite break apart. In this moment, we hope the change to the original text, the music, soundscape, and visuals, help you experience Lady Macbeth's dramatic cut-off from Macbeth and just how alone she feels. And by extension, we hope you feel a more natural progression to her internal state of being overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and guilt, ultimately leading to her suicide.
By drawing you into the Macbeths’ inner worlds and heightening your experience of their inner turmoil, we hope, as I said earlier, to help humanize these characters who are so easy to villainize. We focus on their psychological conflicts with regard to desire for power, their instincts to take it by any means possible, including murder, their conscience warning them against such action; and the mediating part of the mind that tries to manage the two extremes by finding a compromise that most adaptively deals with the reality of the situation. So, when the mind Whisperers of goodness and darkness are battling it out by each saying, "Leave all the rest to me", the mediating mind Whisperer says, “We will speak further". In other words, saying, “Hey, let’s talk about this and calm down before making any rash decisions”. So, this is an example of how, in this adaptation, we also seek to focus on the power of free will, and our ability to shape our lives by the choices we make.
The human condition is filled with all kinds of contradictions in our thoughts, feelings, and impulses. But we ultimately decide what we will do or not do with this mess of contradictions. Let us remember that though the witches make prophecies about Macbeth’s future kingship, they never say how that will happen, nor do they say what he should do. He and Lady Macbeth, of their own free will, based on their ambivalent states of mind, and based on their ability or inability to manage their grief, anxiety, urges, and conscience, is what determines their actions. Not fate.
And isn’t the same true for us and for our present-day political leaders? Aren’t we all ultimately responsible for knowing or coming to know our own minds, the states of our minds, and by extension, aren't we all responsible for how we behave? So, humanizing the Macbeths is also a vehicle for focusing on free will and in no way absolves them of their accountability and responsibility for their choices and actions. It does the opposite. Consistent with our perspective on free will is the way the witches function in this adaptation.
Throughout the play, the witches observe and are curious about how these mortal humans (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth) will deal with the prophecies they share with Macbeth; but the witches do not control or drive the Macbeths to behave in the way they do. At times in this adaptation, the witches function much like a Greek Chorus who describe and comment upon what is happening. Also, in this adaptation, some of what the witches say is text that other characters in the play usually say. Having the same actors play the witches and whisperers allows for the interpretation that the witches transform themselves into parts of the human mind in order to understand how the human mind works, and how the human mind deals with complex, contradictory feelings, and decision-making.
Other aspects of making this Macbethian Mindscape included, as I mentioned earlier, creating an abridgment that maintained the skeletal story of the original play. I also re-crafted some of the text from Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the witches to serve as inner dialogue within the Macbeths' minds to express the competing and conflicting thoughts and feelings they have about their relationship and their actions. More specifically, I introduced three Whisperers in the minds of Mac and Lady Mac. One Whisperer is the evil, dark part of the human mind, the second Whisperer is the goodness, conscience and light part of the mind, and the third Whisperer is the mediating part of the mind that attempts to manage and find compromises for goodness and evil.
The original score and musical soundscape is used to amplify and introduce the Macbeths’ ambivalence in musical language. I worked with our Croatian composer, Zarko, to create original and specific music, and with our sound designer, Zachary, to create the sound effects for the three whisperers and an “inner -mind” soundscape.
The design of the visuals here in the planetarium, just like the sound design, were created to give you an immersive experience with the story happening around you. I worked with James and the planetarium team's technical and animation experts, Dani and Wade, to create conceptual and specific visuals.
One very important aspect of the design of the visuals was the creation of surreal visual distortion animation of different types and intensities, specifically intended for times when you were inside the minds of the Macbeths.
All elements of this production were designed and curated with the aim of giving you priority access to a felt experience of being inside the Macbeth's minds, while simultaneously maintaining the immediacy of the action of Shakespeare’s original play. And as I suggested earlier, we are at a moment in time when our world needs more access to ambivalent thoughts and feelings, and a reduction in division and polarization.
We hope that our Macbethian Mindscape creates space and time for the music of ambivalence to affect you and move you, even in a fast-paced story. And even though the Macbeths DO NOT ultimately succeed in adaptively managing their ambivalence. And as our story ends, it also starts anew, with the very same questions for Malcolm's psyche as he assumes power. Will Malcolm create more holding space for his own conflicting thoughts and feelings? In contrast to the Macbeths, will Malcolm manage the music of his ambivalence by having a conductor who can better balance dark and light?
In a world that moves and changes more rapidly than it ever has before, will we create space and time to meaningfully be aware of, tolerate and adaptively manage our own ambivalent feelings? Will our political leaders? What are the individual and global consequences of not doing so? Of living in perpetuity with polarization, division, disconnection, and paranoia? Viewed through a psychological lens of the challenges of ambivalence embedded in the human condition, in the present day, and in Shakespeare's time, Macbeth is every person’s story. Cruelty, Remorse, Peace.
Thank you,
Wendy Lippe
Tonight’s adaptation is an 80-minute abridgment that maintains the skeletal story of the original play while focusing on and delving into the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The goal of this production is to heighten your awareness of, and perhaps your feelings about, the Macbeths' internally conflicted minds…while simultaneously maintaining the urgency and immediacy of the action of the play. I call this adaptation a "Macbethian Mindscape”. Of note is that all of the language, every single word of this adapted production, is from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, though revised and remixed.
As a psychologist, director, producer, actress, and human living in these very difficult times, what inspired me to create this Macbethian Mindscape adaptation focused on the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? I hope my director’s note will shed some light on the answer to that question.
I think we are seeing an increased fascination with Shakespeare's Macbeth across the globe because there is something about this text that speaks to the current exacerbation of the polarization of our world, and the footprint of disconnection and paranoia that the pandemic has left us with. I think we are returning to this play over and over again in our attempt to master and work through a world in which we have become alarmingly divided and polarized… because we have a dramatically reduced capacity for tolerating and managing complex, contradictory thoughts and feelings - otherwise known as ambivalence, or what many refer to as "mixed feelings."
And Shakespeare’s original text has many different types of ambivalence in it, including the tension between urges to commit murder and conscience warning against it. But I think the power of the immediacy and urgency of the action of the play is one of a number of factors that can create an interesting dilemma for us –I think the exciting urgency of the action lessens how much we experience the Macbeths struggling with their ambivalence, specifically with regard to their conscience. And when we don't feel their connection to their conscience and feelings of guilt, I think we also empathize less with their human capacity to feel anxiety, depression, dread, and the pain of loss. As a result, we have a tendency to villainize these characters, rather than humanize and identify with them, even if just a little bit. So, I think the call of the Macbeth text, at this moment in time, in the world we are living in, is about our need to reclaim and feel the dualities and complexities of the human condition that exist within all of us, and even within Shakespeare's characters, Macbeth and lady Macbeth.
Let me say more about ambivalence because it is at the heart of this adapted production. Being ambivalent is being able to hold dualities or hold contradictions, in our minds and in our feelings, rather than being uni-dimensional, and holding just one thought, or one feeling, or one point of view. Psychologists who practice psychotherapy have long understood the importance of helping their clients become aware of, tolerate, and manage contradictory thoughts and feelings. Theory articles and books, as well as
clinical case studies discussing ambivalence have been published for decades. But to my surprise, it's only in the last few years that we have quantitative empirical research support for the idea that being ambivalent is a good thing. We have had quantitative empirical research saying that being ambivalent is a bad thing, but now we have research demonstrating the many benefits of being ambivalent which include: improved decision-making processes, more balanced and accurate judgment, reduced cognitive bias, better problem-solving, increased creativity, increased adaptability and increased receptivity to other people's perspectives. Wow, we really need that in our world right now, don’t we?
So, being ambivalent or holding contradictory thoughts and feelings in our minds is a good thing; BUT it does not necessarily mean we can manage that ambivalence well by finding an adaptive and healthy solution. In other words, what are we going to DO when we have these tensions between opposing thoughts and feelings, and what do Macbeth and Lady Macbeth do or fail to do to manage their opposing thoughts and feelings?
There are many kinds of dualities in Shakespeare's Macbeth, but for our adaptation, we are primarily focusing on the ambivalent feelings of dark urges and conscience, and the question of whether an adaptive compromise can be found. And though ambivalent language is no doubt in Shakespeare’s play, the Macbeths certainly do not manage the tension between their dark urges and their conscience well. Macbeth goes on a protracted murder rampage and Lady Macbeth kills herself out of guilt and remorse.
Furthermore, though ambivalent language capturing the inner tension between dark urges and conscience is in the original play, do we really feel it? Do we really believe that tension is there? I don't think so. And as I said earlier, I think, amongst other factors, it's because of the compelling urgency and immediacy of the action of the play that we get swept up in. How many times have you seen a Macbeth production where you really believed that the Macbeths could possibly reconsider and go in the other direction? Not commit murder? Never. The play moves with such haste, and we get carried away so quickly, as the Macbeths do, in their passionate desire for power, that we never really believe, despite what they say, that things might turn out differently than they do. Even though Macbeth is like, "Well, Duncan is kind of a great guy, maybe I shouldn’t do this", we don’t believe him. And do we really feel and believe how Lady Macbeth gets to the point of precipitously falling off of a cliff of guilt and remorse, and killing herself? I don't think there is enough time and space in the original play for these internal conflicts to emotionally land for us.
There are a couple of other interesting facts that shed light on why we might not have enough time and space in the original play to have the Macbeths' competing thoughts and feelings really land for us emotionally. It is widely accepted that Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in the form in which we have it today, is not in fact the full play that Shakespeare wrote for King James the 1st. We don’t know how the abridgment came to be, but Macbeth is shorter than any of Shakespeare’s other tragedies… and by a long shot. And though Macbeth and Lady Macbeth change so dramatically over the course of the play, the time that passes from the beginning to the end of the play is thought by some to be one week, and others to be a few weeks to several weeks.
In 1916, Freud asked “In so short a period of time, what could turn the hesitating, ambitious man into an unbridled tyrant, and his steely-hearted instigator into a sick woman gnawed by remorse?" Freud added, "Events crowd upon us in the tragedy with breathless haste." Freud discussed how the short period of time covered in the play makes it impossible for us to understand the change in the characters of Macbeth and his wife. There is simply not enough time and space for us to have a felt sense of the complexity of what their minds go through and how they transform. By contrast, Freud described how in Holinshed's Chronicle (1577), from which Shakespeare took the plot of Macbeth, ten years pass between the murder of Duncan (by which Macbeth becomes king) and his further misdeeds. It is not until after this lapse of time that the change begins in Macbeth. Thus, in Holinshed’s Chronicle we do have the space and time for the Macbeth's to meaningfully grapple with their ambivalent thoughts and feelings.
As Freud continued to try to make sense of Mac and Lady Mac's changes in such a short time and with so much haste, he was intrigued by Ludwig Jekel’s hypothesis that perhaps Shakespeare intended for Mac and Lady Mac to be considered as one character, one mind. If we think about Mac and Lady Mac combined to be one character, we can imagine feeling a more three-dimensional ambivalence, an intrapsychic conflict within their combined mind that would feel more real. For example, if the Macbeths were combined to be one character, I think it would make more emotional sense to us when Lady Macbeth becomes overwhelmed by guilt and remorse and takes her own life.
Along these lines, many have described a critical change in the Macbeths' relationship –where in the beginning of the play, Macbeth expresses hesitation and conscience, and Lady Macbeth far less as the instigator of Duncan’s murder. And then later in the play, Macbeth becomes the instigator of many more murders, with a dramatic reduction in his conscience. But then Lady Macbeth becomes the holder of conscience and guilt, and expresses it in her sleep-walking scene and with her subsequent suicide.
In our Mindscape adaptation, the focus on ambivalence and internal conflict introduces Lady Mac’s conscience much earlier on in the play via one of the three mind Whisperers; this same mind Whisperer repeats and echoes Lady Mac’s references to the baby that she and Macbeth have lost. "I have given suck and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe thst milks me." One interpretation of the Macbeths’ extreme ambition, and Macbeth's willingness to kill Macduff’s babies, is that that the Macbeths are driven by the pain and loss they feel over the death of their own baby and their subsequent infertility. So, we hope the mind Whisperers, particularly the Whisperer of conscience, which also reminds Lady Macbeth and Macbeth of their own painful loss, help to make Lady Mac feel a bit more like a three-dimensional character in her own right.
We also attempt to create a more extreme and painful conflict between Mac and Lady Mac that emphasizes the break in their union. The violence of their conflict juxtaposed with the music of utter silence, followed by a mournful soundscape, is intended to bring you right into the Macbeths' hearts and minds as the two characters have a very definite break apart. In this moment, we hope the change to the original text, the music, soundscape, and visuals, help you experience Lady Macbeth's dramatic cut-off from Macbeth and just how alone she feels. And by extension, we hope you feel a more natural progression to her internal state of being overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and guilt, ultimately leading to her suicide.
By drawing you into the Macbeths’ inner worlds and heightening your experience of their inner turmoil, we hope, as I said earlier, to help humanize these characters who are so easy to villainize. We focus on their psychological conflicts with regard to desire for power, their instincts to take it by any means possible, including murder, their conscience warning them against such action; and the mediating part of the mind that tries to manage the two extremes by finding a compromise that most adaptively deals with the reality of the situation. So, when the mind Whisperers of goodness and darkness are battling it out by each saying, "Leave all the rest to me", the mediating mind Whisperer says, “We will speak further". In other words, saying, “Hey, let’s talk about this and calm down before making any rash decisions”. So, this is an example of how, in this adaptation, we also seek to focus on the power of free will, and our ability to shape our lives by the choices we make.
The human condition is filled with all kinds of contradictions in our thoughts, feelings, and impulses. But we ultimately decide what we will do or not do with this mess of contradictions. Let us remember that though the witches make prophecies about Macbeth’s future kingship, they never say how that will happen, nor do they say what he should do. He and Lady Macbeth, of their own free will, based on their ambivalent states of mind, and based on their ability or inability to manage their grief, anxiety, urges, and conscience, is what determines their actions. Not fate.
And isn’t the same true for us and for our present-day political leaders? Aren’t we all ultimately responsible for knowing or coming to know our own minds, the states of our minds, and by extension, aren't we all responsible for how we behave? So, humanizing the Macbeths is also a vehicle for focusing on free will and in no way absolves them of their accountability and responsibility for their choices and actions. It does the opposite. Consistent with our perspective on free will is the way the witches function in this adaptation.
Throughout the play, the witches observe and are curious about how these mortal humans (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth) will deal with the prophecies they share with Macbeth; but the witches do not control or drive the Macbeths to behave in the way they do. At times in this adaptation, the witches function much like a Greek Chorus who describe and comment upon what is happening. Also, in this adaptation, some of what the witches say is text that other characters in the play usually say. Having the same actors play the witches and whisperers allows for the interpretation that the witches transform themselves into parts of the human mind in order to understand how the human mind works, and how the human mind deals with complex, contradictory feelings, and decision-making.
Other aspects of making this Macbethian Mindscape included, as I mentioned earlier, creating an abridgment that maintained the skeletal story of the original play. I also re-crafted some of the text from Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the witches to serve as inner dialogue within the Macbeths' minds to express the competing and conflicting thoughts and feelings they have about their relationship and their actions. More specifically, I introduced three Whisperers in the minds of Mac and Lady Mac. One Whisperer is the evil, dark part of the human mind, the second Whisperer is the goodness, conscience and light part of the mind, and the third Whisperer is the mediating part of the mind that attempts to manage and find compromises for goodness and evil.
The original score and musical soundscape is used to amplify and introduce the Macbeths’ ambivalence in musical language. I worked with our Croatian composer, Zarko, to create original and specific music, and with our sound designer, Zachary, to create the sound effects for the three whisperers and an “inner -mind” soundscape.
The design of the visuals here in the planetarium, just like the sound design, were created to give you an immersive experience with the story happening around you. I worked with James and the planetarium team's technical and animation experts, Dani and Wade, to create conceptual and specific visuals.
One very important aspect of the design of the visuals was the creation of surreal visual distortion animation of different types and intensities, specifically intended for times when you were inside the minds of the Macbeths.
All elements of this production were designed and curated with the aim of giving you priority access to a felt experience of being inside the Macbeth's minds, while simultaneously maintaining the immediacy of the action of Shakespeare’s original play. And as I suggested earlier, we are at a moment in time when our world needs more access to ambivalent thoughts and feelings, and a reduction in division and polarization.
We hope that our Macbethian Mindscape creates space and time for the music of ambivalence to affect you and move you, even in a fast-paced story. And even though the Macbeths DO NOT ultimately succeed in adaptively managing their ambivalence. And as our story ends, it also starts anew, with the very same questions for Malcolm's psyche as he assumes power. Will Malcolm create more holding space for his own conflicting thoughts and feelings? In contrast to the Macbeths, will Malcolm manage the music of his ambivalence by having a conductor who can better balance dark and light?
In a world that moves and changes more rapidly than it ever has before, will we create space and time to meaningfully be aware of, tolerate and adaptively manage our own ambivalent feelings? Will our political leaders? What are the individual and global consequences of not doing so? Of living in perpetuity with polarization, division, disconnection, and paranoia? Viewed through a psychological lens of the challenges of ambivalence embedded in the human condition, in the present day, and in Shakespeare's time, Macbeth is every person’s story. Cruelty, Remorse, Peace.
Thank you,
Wendy Lippe