The Audition

4 weeks ago, Drew and I, along with four other third year actors at Bath Spa University, were asked to do an impromptu read through of some scenes from Macbeth, for some people visiting from the Salisbury Playhouse.

The Salisbury Playhouse have been producing 'BareBones Productions' for several years, and Macbeth is their latest venture. The idea of BareBones is that the play is ripped appart, focusing on different ideas of staging and performance. It is aimed at students from Key Stage 3 (year 9), onwards, or anyone else interested in the different decisions a director could take when looking at these classical texts.

During the audition, we were asked to get into pairs and sight read Act 1 Scene 7 (or, the scene between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, once he has heard his prophecies). We then were asked by Mark (from the Salisbury Playhouse) to do different things with the scene, thinking about different character motivations and interesting ways of staging. For exmaple, I had to sight read the scene once, then had to do it again with the idea that Lady Macbeth was nervously awaiting her husband's decision, and then again with the motivation of trying to persuade him to do "the deed".

After this, we were asked to sight read another scene: The Witches. Firstly we had to do this infamous scene 'straight', then with more of a grotesque feel, mixing up and rotating the lines so that each person could have a go at playing each witch.

I found the audition enjoyable, as it was fun to think of new and different ways to stage a scene, and to play on different character motivations. It was a good exercise in taking direction and completely changing the initial way i saw a character, therefore adjusting my original (albeit, momentary) interpretation.


Drew and I were then told that we had been successful, and would be coming to the Salisbury Playhouse to be Placement Actors in 'Mastering Macbeth'; a week's rehearsal period culminating in a week's run at the Salberg Studio in the Salisbury Playhouse.We will be documenting our rehearsal period on this blog every day.

We are both excited and intrigued to start the rehearsal process, thinking creatively about different character motivations and staging ideas... and are eager to dive into the thrilling world of Shakespeare for two weeks!

Below is the link to the Salisbury Playhouse/Mastering Macbeth web page, where you can see a little bit more of what we are doing!

Updates to follow!

Suzanne

mastering macbeth  --web-page