In 2009, we are launching a new, school touring production of our Chamber Series Macbeth!!

The Chamber Shakespeare School Tour is made possible by The Albert M. Greenfield Foundation.

Now you can bring The Theatre to your school! This touring production of Macbeth will feature Theatre actors and will be directed by Artistic Director, Carmen Khan. The one-hour performance will be followed by a discussion with the actors. Participating schools will receive an in-depth study guide before the performance.

The purpose of the Chamber Shakespeare Tour is to explore Shakespeare’s work in another way, in its purest, most refined form. We have stripped away unnecessary stage decoration, costumes, and lighting, in an attempt to reveal the dynamic myth that underlies the play.

With this minimalist approach we hope to go beyond our cultural and social boundaries. We hope to reveal what is more universal and eternal rather than force the plays to conform to the world we know. We seek to examine the timeless themes in Shakespeare’s plays through a form that is more ritualistic in its essence. This then may inform a full production of the play in ways we have not yet imagined.

The first in our Chamber Shakespeare Series is Macbeth. It is a profound study in the psychology of transgression — a study of the Fall of Man. This exacting and provocative study traces the deterioration of Macbeth’s innocence from the moment of his temptation to the moment of his death.

The production is designed to be performed in school common spaces like gyms, cafeterias, and auditoriums.
The tour runs Monday - Friday February 17 - May 8, 2009.

Performances are available in either the morning or afternoon.

Performances must start promptly.
Audience: 150 max per performance
Cost: $800 per performance ($700 for 2nd performance in the same school)

Additional Requirements:
Cast and crew need 45 minutes before and 30 minutes after the performance in the space.
A secured room where cast and crew may leave belongings and valuables.

Dates are filling fast! To book your school, contact Lucy Tyson, Director of Education at 215.496.9722 or [email protected]

From the Artistic Director

For many years we have been looking for a way to bring the highest quality Shakespeare productions to high schools. Until now that has not been feasible because of large casts and complex production elements that are prohibitively expensive. We started to look at other Shakespeare theatres and their education programs to see if we could learn about their adaptations. As we searched we were still faced with casts that were too large that attempted to portray all of the characters. This seemed unwieldy and not necessarily the best way to tell the story. Inspiration came from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s School Visit program, where two and three and four person adaptations of parts of plays were brought into the schools. Their focus was on one aspect of the play. This led to the idea of maybe doing a three-5 person version of a play that focused on the main character. With this in mind the cutting became obvious. What if we focused only on the psychology of Hamlet or Macbeth or the love story from the point of view of Romeo and Juliet only?

The Macbeth we developed is approximately one hour long. Three actors portray seven characters. They change costume in front of the audience and also provide the entire soundscape using a variety of instruments including a Japanese erhu, Asian, African and Irish drums, Tibetan ringing bowls and chimes and a Chinese gong. In this production you will see only one witch portrayed. Subplots have been stripped away to concentrate the action entirely on Macbeth. Most of the scenes without Macbeth have been cut - with only two exceptions for Lady Macbeth - and those that remain have been refined to allow the play to follow and represent the consciousness of Macbeth.

Chamber

I wanted this adaption to be an intense focused look at the main character of Macbeth. It is as if you could look through a microscope and see the inner workings of his mind. Although this is an adaptation I did not want in any sense to shortchange it by calling it a reduced version. It is a discreet piece that stands by itself and serves a specific purpose- to closely examine the consciousness of Macbeth. As the script evolved I began to imagine it in a confined space. It was reminiscent in a way of the format of a chamber orchestra. A few musicians in a small space able to reveal the subtleties and nuances of the music in a way no other setting could achieve. I looked up the word chamber and one definition struck me- chamber- an enclosed space as in the chamber of the heart. It was and exciting connection because I wanted the audience to really feel what was in the deep recesses of Macbeth’s heart and mind- both enclosed and secret and only available if we should choose to share what is there. So the word chamber became central to the physical presentation of the piece as well as a poetic emblem for the examination of the plays in this way.