On Nov. 2-5, Main Stage performed William Shakespeare’s Scottish play “Macbeth” in the W. D. Powell Theatre.
The cast and crew saw their weeks of rehearsals and hard work pay off in their Friday night debut. The audience was greeted with an elaborate set of the interior of the Macbeth castle with glows of red and green in the background. An iron chandelier ornamented with stick-figured men climbing up the chain hung next to the staircase where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth would frequent during their plotting and gruesome soliloquies. Jump scares of lightning announced the presence of the three witches who would suddenly appear next to an audience member and exit with a chorus of cackling.
Junior English major Sadie Adams was excited to see her first live performance of the play which she had only read in high school and more recently in her Plays of Shakespeare class. Adams described how she enjoyed getting to see the characters she read about come to life on the stage:
“I really liked how they put it on, especially with the witches,” Adams said. “There is so much that you could do with the witches, and you can interpret them in so many ways. And I really liked how they put them in scenes they weren’t originally in as different characters to help further this idea of Macbeth as a puppet.”
Directed by Union alumnus James Matthew Wyatt, the play was also performed by a cast comprised of students from various majors who share a love for theatre.
Sophomore public relations and history double-major Amy de Groot has done theatre since kindergarten and jumped at the opportunity to act in Union’s production of Macbeth as one of the witches.
“It’s kind of an outlet,” de Groot said. “I mean, I love PR and history, that’s why I’m majoring in them, but they don’t stir the creative juices in the same way, and I think that for everybody, if you don’t get that stirring, something dies inside of you. It’s really about finding that outlet where you can just stop stressing about the world.”
