Teaching Shakespeare Through Performance

Lingua inglese 2 davimus

First meeting spring semester

There were several students, 15 may be waiting for Roberto Paci Dalò. Some overlappings with degree sessions. In any case our lesson has been moved to Tuesday 2.30 4.30 pm in room 6.

-two extra meetings will be
1.
on Tuesday Feb 22, and wed 23 with Sylvia Toone and Stuart Marlow
2.
On March 10 with Roberto Paci Dalò

They will help us working on Macbeth O’Boss which will be put on stage the last week of April and should last about 20 minutes

Starting from the division of roles Giusy and Pasquale-scriptwriters and quasidirectors-started working on the setting and dialogue for the first act and they come up with [they will send their summary]
- having a TV screen where two journalists announce the camorra fight where Macbeth and Banquo ‘won’ over opposite clans. Video where one of the journalists will be Alessandro Licata (dialogue to be created and shot)
- in between the two halves of the Curtain a singer sings a Neapolitan song—pub/cabaret kind (which one?—Simona Palmieri is going to sing
- The curtain rises and we have tables with people drinking and especially SMOKING and at one of the tables the three witches /bad girls meet Macbeth and Banquo coming back, tired and wounded from the camorra attack.
EVERYBODY:
FAIR IS FOUL AND FOUL IS FAIR
HOVER THROUGH THE Fog/smoke and FILTHY AIR

THE THREE WITCHES
The first:
Where are we three going to meet again Macbeth, O’Boss?

The second:
Here in the Scottish pub

The third
How do you know bitch?

The second
Haven’t you eyes? Here he is, the bloody man with his friend, boss Banquo

The first
Hallo friends!

They make predictions and equivocations…

In the meantime a tv screen again announces Duncan’s making Macbeth boss of Cawdor’s clan
….
While the First Act is a Pub/lic space

The second Act is the private mansion of the Macbeth’s, of the ambitious couple

The idea is replicating the Pompeian red of Scarface’s house, with red lights and panels suggesting glamorous painting, arms, gorgeous lamps and fashionable curtains

Lady Macbeth should remind something of the witches. She is wearing a black nightgown while, lying on the floor by a light candle [everyone should learn by heart one of the most famous among Shakespeare’s monologues:
Tomorrow and tomorrow/…
Out, out brief candle! …
Tale told by an idiot signifying nothing (V,v,16-28)]
She reads her husband’s letter
Cfr Pasquale’s writing
[She may be watching Scarlett Johansson wearing the Neapolitan dressmaker’s dress in GArrone’s Gomorra (look for those images in the movie)

Then there is the meeting of the couple
She is wearing a blood red elegant dress
She is bursting from desire…social, acquisitive ambitions

In order to be the first camorra couple she is ready to renounce maternity, to have an abortion (cfr the contemporary movie, Revolutionary Road)???

Lady Macbeth
I can’t wait
…We will move to Posillipo? We’ll have a larger house, we will buy everything, things people, politicians, markets, American Chinese, Indian A delirium of omnipotence, both private and public

…
Soundtrack
Drums
Pipes
Chimes (Renata)

The Third Act
Chain of murders
-Duncan
-Banquo
-Lady MAcduff and children
Crescendo of cruelty and horror

Behind a transparent curtain? Like a white curtain which progressively is stained with red?

-Macduff and what is a man?

The Fourth Act

The outcome is loneliness


-The cauldron (choreography of witches [Annamaria clarizia as a choreographer and Rosalia Paracuollo and others as dancers)

-Lady Macbeth alone-sleepwalking scene—again in her nightgown and in the end she lies again on the floor of the stage near a candle

-Macbeth comes and turns out the light
Monologue and fight

The performance closes with a choreography. Mara was brilliantly suggesting that it may be about a sterile Birnan wood where the people-trees come to life again, in a reborn , regenerated, hopeful dimension.

We said also many more thoings; you all are invited to modify, make suggestions and contribute, everybody.

Next week we would like to shoot the improvisation of the meeting of the bossy couple who will improvise , hopefully, by the help of Sylvia.

Also remember to memorize the monologue, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

We all want to say, on the contrary, that we work for today and tomorrow!?!