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Reflection
Macbeth, It’s a widely known as one of the most brutal tragedies that William Shakespeare ever wrote. It involves a lot of sadness and battle but when its put onto a puppet screen it’s a lot different. Our production of Macbeth was slightly different than the original involving a cut script and it was portrayed using shadow puppets. My specific role in this play was getting all the showing day things ready, like the programs for all the audience and greeting people at the door. I also did some live acting for select scenes picked by our team of directors that had the most significant in the play or would be much better if it was actually performed by real people instead of puppets.
I connected to this play in a variety of ways, I felt going into this project that I was going to hate it and this really turned my views around as a student and taught me to be more open-minded. I really liked how we got to make all the puppets and have them be exactly how we wanted them to be and we had a lot more flexibility then we could have had when we did the live acting. My favorite moment in this entire project was when I got to fight Macbeth in the ending scene (live), which was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done on stage. This was really a project that turned my views around about Shakespeare and I hope that others can see the way I see his work.
The project was very difficult in many ways. Most people in the audience didn’t know the chaos that was happening backstage in hushed voices. And I think this was the hardest part, running back and forth to get puppets and sets, getting all the actors together and people suddenly having a mental breakdown because they couldn’t remember their lines. I personally didn’t have any difficult experiences during this play and I think that its because I didn’t work on actually producing the play I was more of the audience guy. The hardest part I can remember was when I had to record my lines (Macduff) over the microphone and every time I messed up I we would have to do the scene all over again. This was especially frustrating considering how different the dialect was back in the early 1600’s with some words that I didn’t even existed.
The thing that I learned most was collaboration. I was never a very good person that worked well with others and I think this showed through when I needed critique for my program and I needed my peers to help. I also learned a lot about collaborating when I worked with the art team in designing all the puppets and sets and making sure that everything was in place. This I am really glad about because now I really know what its like to collaborate with someone and not just one person but my whole class working together to produce something amazing like this play.
Why William Shakespeare? I think that people are so intrigued by him because he was such a secretive person. Yeah he wrote plays and was a very talented man but still, Shakespeare had a lot of secrets and being human beings we are always curious. We always want to know what’s going on and I think this is why Shakespeare intrigues us so much. When you read a play by William Shakespeare you honestly don’t know what he is saying half the time and you need to really dig deep to understand it. Its sort of like a secret code that you are trying to crack, your trying to dig out the story from the dialect that hasn’t been used in 400 years. Its an interesting subject and I know want to go look into it some more.