shkspr prjct (review)

Catalyst Theater's shkspr prjct was, as its title suggests, an unorthodox and compressed approach to Shakespeare. Running a vigorous ninety minutes, with a cast of seven actors dressed in minimalist black leotards and leggings, its primary effect was that of an avant-garde dance production. Although it was, the program cover told us, "adapted from macbeth [sic]," its origins lay equally in director Kathleen Akerley's interest in Jerzy Grotowski. Despite its title, to review shkspr prjct primarily as Shakespeare works against the production's effects. It is remarkably difficult to describe what shkspr prjct might have to tell us about Macbeth, or about Shakespeare—indeed, the show is difficult to describe at all—but that is not to suggest that we ought to dismiss it altogether.

The production would have been recognizable as drawing from Macbeth even without the subtitle advertising its source. The snippets of dialogue and personal names made that clear, as did the iconic gesture of the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth trying to wash the blood off her hands. But, it was also the atmosphere that located this play as stemming from Shakespeare's: dark and brooding, fast and furious, violent and exhausting. While shkspr prjct was recognizable as a particular version of the Macbeth that we know—one with heightened emotions, headlong pacing, and supernatural presence—it was also utterly defamiliarized. There was some dialogue, but the overwhelming majority of Shakespeare's (and Middleton's) words were stripped. There were characters, but they were not congruent with the actors: the role of Macbeth was played by three different actors, there were two Lady Macbeths, and the other parts were shared among the acting ensemble. There were occasional glimpses of a pattern in these shifting parts: the actor playing Duncan later played Macbeth, and an early Macbeth actor took up the role of Banquo's ghost. It could be tempting to see a commentary here on the nature of monarchy, or on Macbeth's being haunted by his own conscience and it's hard to imagine that such musings were not invited.

Any sustained interpretation along these lines, however, was thwarted by the general chaos of the performance, a chaos that was both exhilarating and exhausting. The production was staged in a small black box theater with raked seating on one side—small enough that the audience felt on top of the action, a closeness that was especially brought home as the evening went on, the temperature rose, and the audience and actors sweated together. The set was entirely abstract, with playing areas of different levels—a boulder-ish area stage left that the actors could climb on, a door that actors could pass through—and with a projection of a full moon always in the background. The plot of the play was slightly rearranged and made oblique; the opening lines were the Porter's, the witches were gone, soliloquies seemed to be repeated, sometimes it was hard to tell if Banquo had already been killed, but the overall shape followed Shakespeare's script. If you were familiar enough with Macbeth, you would see its contours here in the murder of Duncan, the deteriorating relationship between husband and wife and their final madness and deaths. Bits and pieces of Shakespeare's dialogue floated to the surface, but the action was conveyed primarily through gestures, not words. The constant activity, the actors' flesh and leotards, and the heat and smell of sweat all emphasized the performance's physical presence. Combined with the abstract visual images and the emphasis on the sound of words (rather than their sense), this physicality seemed to confer on the performance its own visceral lifespan. If you were looking to grasp this production by tying it...