"Is this a dagger which I see before me..."
"They met me in the day of success..."
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow..."
How can you possibly cut the beautiful words of William Shakespeare? Let me explain that sometimes this truly is a painful process. There is so much important information in the text because at the time that was all Shakespeare had! Fortunately, now we have the tools to effectively tell the story of Macbeth without all of the text.
We spent one whole rehearsal meticulously reading through the script and cutting. We always keep scansion in mind, but we especially pay attention to important story details. We certainly cannot cut out Duncan’s death right? (Whoops sorry for the spoiler)! We even cut something that got put back in. Our fearless and talented director, Lindsay Tanner (who will be introduced in the next post), was able to shed light on a scene that we were too quick to judge as unnecessary!
We hope for the show to run 90 minutes without an intermission!