Senior School Production - Macbeth Video is Here!

Mr Ben Wills - Drama Teacher, Head of Year 13, Head of Theory of Knowledge

It is my great pleasure to introduce our 2024 Senior School Production: Macbeth.

Macbeth is a tale of greed and ambition, and the tragic downfall of a protagonist corrupted by these. As with many of Shakespeare’s works, its themes still resonate today, and Macbeth is widely performed throughout the world. It is a very popular play for school productions as it is the shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies and contains a multitude of roles for actors of different levels of experience and ability. Despite the sometimes dark nature of the play, it is also one of Shakespeare’s more enjoyable and accessible texts, with a fast-paced plot filled with adventure, conflict, betrayal, and revenge.

There are no secrets, just hard work on the part of the students. Those who gave the best performances took the time to learn their lines early and to gain a good understanding of their character's personality and motivations. Once an actor understands their character's personality and objectives, it's easy for them to take the next step and start imagining how their character would act in the situation they're in. The famous Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski called this the 'magic if' - if an actor empathises with and understands their character well, they can imagine what their character would do in a scene and act appropriately.  

Of course, it's a lot harder to do this when the text you are working with is in a different language, or in a difficult to understand type of language, as is the case with Shakespeare. But those students who took the time to really learn and understand their characters gave great performances. As a director, a big part of my job is helping actors to do this, by asking them questions about what they would do or think as their character, and helping them to understand their place in the play. In the end, however, it is the responsibility of each individual actor to make the role their own: in fusing their own experiences and understandings with their understanding of the character as written, they create their unique version of the role. This is why theatre is such an interesting art form for me, as different actors can play the same character in very different ways yet give equally great performances.