THE WILD GIRLS
 

On the last day of May in 2014, three Wisconsin girls walked into the woods.

 

The girls were 12 years old, having set out on this walk the morning after a sleepover to celebrate one girl’s 12th birthday. They had already gone skating and played dress-up.

 

When they reached the woods, they played a game of hide-and-seek. Minutes into the game, the birthday girl took out a kitchen knife and stabbed her best friend 19 times.

 

The crime made national news. How could it not? The two girls who had planned and carried out the attack were hardly the usual suspects—they were young and female. And their motive was equally unusual: they told police that their friend was intended as a blood sacrifice to initiate them as “proxies” to a shadowy figure of internet urban legend known as Slender Man. This faceless, long-limbed ghoul had boiled up from the collective online imagination in photoshopped images and scary stories, and the girls had embellished his myth to such extremes in their own shared fantasies that they felt they could murder a friend to prove themselves worthy of him. Myth had crossed over into reality.

 

The Slender Man stabbing made headlines because it seemed like a unique case, an isolated incident. But it was far from unique—look around, and you’ll see these cases everywhere. There’s the notorious Parker-Hulme murder in 1954 (made famous in Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures), in which two teenage girls dreamed up an elaborate fantasy world together and then, when they were about to be separated, beat one of their mothers to death during a walk in the woods. Go farther back, and remember that the madness of 1692 in Salem began with a group of preteen girls meeting up in the woods, and then emerging with tales of seeing witches and devils. Indeed, girls have always been going into the woods together to play in imagined occults, and a few have come back with real blood on their hands.

 

One of the Slender Man girls was eventually diagnosed with a psychological disorder called “shared delusional belief,” a term that might just as easily define the strong bonds of fantasy that bind teen girls together. “To be an adolescent girl is, for many, to view yourself as desperately set apart, powerfully misunderstood,” writes documentary filmmaker and writer Alex Mar in Virginia Quarterly Review. “It’s an age defined by a raw desire for experience; by the chaotic beginning of a girl’s sexual self; by obsessive friendships, fast emotions, the birth and rebirth of hard grudges, an inner life that stands outside of logic. You have an undiluted desire for private knowledge, for a genius shared with a select few. You bend reality regularly. Add to this heightened state a singular intimacy with another girl who feels the same isolation—you’ve encountered the only other resident of your private planet—and the charge is exponentially increased.”

 

Director Erica Schmidt read these stories of violence, remembered that shared charge between teenage girls, and thought of another tale of occult visions in the wilderness: Macbeth. She imagined seven girls meeting up after school, and finding themselves carried away by sharing Shakespeare’s words. She even heard echoes between the fictional and real language; Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalked line “one, two, why then, ‘tis time to do’t” transmutes into the “we really did go on three” a West Virginia high school girl posted on Twitter shortly after she and another girl stabbed their friend in 2012.

 

Schmidt also wondered how casting only young women would highlight the play’s repeated linkage between violence and masculinity. That language is everywhere: from Lady Macbeth’s calling on spirits to “unsex” her so that she can prompt murder, to her telling her husband that “you were a man” only if he kills the king, to Macbeth’s determination to “put on manly readiness,” to Macduff’s admission after the murder of his family that while he will “dispute it like a man…I must also feel it as a man.”

 

By giving audiences the unfamiliar experience of seeing young women act out a very familiar play, this production of MAC BETH seeks to rekindle something of the original shock in the work. Just as the real-world violence carried out by these modern girls jolted observers, so this production jolts its audience by restoring the primal wildness to Shakespeare’s tragedy.

 

– AKIVA FOX 

 

Ms. Fox was the Literary Manager and Dramaturg of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. for six seasons, and is the creator of the Clear Shakespeare podcast.

​

​

​

HAUNTING WOMEN IN MACBETH

 

Gender in Macbeth is never quite what it seems. Like Shakespeare’s other major tragedies, the play takes its title and plot from the story of a powerful but conflicted man. As warrior, killer, and king, Macbeth evokes masculine force, mirroring the court that greeted the play’s 1606 first performances. King James I, who had succeeded Queen Elizabeth in 1603, was a Scottish descendant of Banquo and the author of a book about witchcraft, as well as the patron of Shakespeare’s playing company; the play is widely seen as designed to appeal to him. Yet just as the new king’s court was haunted by memories of the late queen, Macbeth is haunted by the specter of formidable female power. Framed by the play’s eerie chorus of witches, and incited by his fiercely determined wife, Macbeth partakes of “the insane root,/ That takes the reason prisoner.” He becomes a man possessed.

 

Macbeth opens with the Weird Sisters, who defy clear categories of sex. Banquo tells them, “you should be women,/ And yet your beards forbid me to interpret/ That you are so.” Their incantatory riddle, “Fair is foul and foul is fair,” underscores their ambiguous status; it also  invades the imagination of Macbeth, who enters the stage announcing “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.” Macbeth’s echo of the Weird Sisters’ words prefigures their indirect sway over his wife. When Lady Macbeth first appears onstage, she is reading about them in a letter from her husband and vowing to make their promise a reality. Like a Greek chorus, the witches never directly intervene in the play’s action, but their hovering presence and prophecies take shape through Lady Macbeth, who goes on to rouse her husband to action with her passionate exhortations.

 

Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed by male actors, with female roles played by boys who didn’t yet have beards or broken voices. Although the Weird Sisters are described as elderly hags, they would have been portrayed by male adolescents, offering a suggestive theatrical subtext behind Banquo’s confusion about their sex. Similarly, when Lady Macbeth calls on spirits to “Come to my woman’s breasts,” and insists she knows “How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me,” her charged words would have emerged from a young male body, complicating her famous plea, “unsex me here!” These dissonances and additional meanings change in productions when casting is aligned with characters’ sex and age. They change in different ways in Erica Schmidt’s production, which reverses Macbeth’s gender-crossings with an all-female cast, imagined as schoolgirls staging the play.

 

Already focused on the haunting power of unsettling female figures, the play takes on new dimensions as its actors respond to the physical and emotional chemistry of the adolescent female world they inhabit. In particular, the witches take on even more shaping power by stepping in to play other characters. Doubling parts was common in original productions; actors with few lines would typically have played multiple roles, maximizing the company’s economic efficiency and building resonant links between characters who shared the same performer’s body. We don’t know whether the actors performing the witches would have played other roles, or which ones if so, but it would make sense given the scarcity of their appearances onstage. In this production, they are heavily repurposed: each Weird Sister serves as an additional five characters, collectively encompassing everyone in the play beyond Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, and Macduff. By visibly lurking in Duncan, Ross, Malcolm, Fleance, and others, as well as the play’s murderers, messengers, and servants, these witches propel the play’s actions with a literal force.

 

Tragedy is often described as dramatizing the fall of kings, and Macbeth fits this template: Macbeth is doomed, just as Duncan was. Yet despite the play’s focus on both depicting and performing for male rulers, its theatrical electricity resides especially in the strange and uncanny female figures who haunt its unfolding events. By replacing the play’s male community with an entirely female world, this production highlights and intensifies these figures’ shaping power, with fascinating and terrifying consequences.

​

– TANYA POLLARD

 

Tanya Pollard is a professor of English at Brooklyn College and at the CUNY Graduate Center. She researches Shakespeare, theater, and performance.

​

ABOUT THE CAST

SHARLENE CRUZ (Witch 3) is making her Off-Broadway debut. Last appeared in Den of Thieves at The Harlem Repertory Theater. Recent graduate of The City College of New York. Special thanks to Jake and Jamie at Paradigm.

 

ISABELLE FUHRMAN (Macbeth) Off-Broadway: All The Fine Boys (The New Group), Two Noble Kinsmen (RADA). Film: Orphan (Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards nomination), The Hunger Games, Tape, Down a Dark Hall, Dear Eleanor, 1 Night, Salvation Boulevard, Don’t Let Me Go (Madrid International Film Festival nomination). TV: “Edge of Seventeen,” “Masters of Sex,” “Ghost Whisperer” (Young Artist Award nomination). Training: RADA.

 

SOPHIE KELLY-HEDRICK (Witch 2) is a freshman at NYU Tisch. She is currently studying in Playwrights Horizons Theatre School. Sophie is thrilled to be making her Off-Broadway debut in Mac Beth. Last seen regionally in Mac Beth (Seattle Repertory Theatre). Sophie hails from Mercer Island, WA.

​

IZABEL MAR (Witch 1) is excited to be making her off-broadway debut in Mac Beth! New York credits include: Tara in Improvised Buffy (ongoing). Regional: Mac Beth (Seattle Repertory Theatre), Arcadia (Seattle Public Theater), Scarlet Letter (Intiman Theatre), ACT Theatre. Thanks to her immediate and chosen family, teachers near and far, and her one true love - coffee. Huge thank you to Erica Schmidt, you hath given me fire. Representation: The Mine Agency. Be bloody, bold, and resolute...and enjoy the show. Ms. Mar performs this role June 2-June 9.

 

ISMENIA MENDES (Lady Macbeth) Marys Seacole (LCT3), Bernie and Mikey’s Trip to the Moon (59E59), The Liar (CSC), Troilus and Cressida, Much Ado About Nothing (The Public - Delacorte), Grand Concourse, Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra (Playwrights Horizons). The Wayside Motor Inn (The Signature Theater), Family Furniture (The Flea), Baby Screams Miracle (Clubbed Thumb). TV/Film: Tali Grapes on the upcoming final season of “Orange is the New Black,” Anja Jacobs on “High Maintenance” (HBO) “The Devil You Know” (HBO pilot: Jenji Kohan/Gus Van Sant). She was a 2018 recipient of Red Bull Theater’s Matador Award for Excellence in Classical Theater. Training: Juilliard.

 

ANNASOPHIA ROBB (Witch 1) is overjoyed to make her theater debut! She is best known for her work on screen, most recently in Hulu’s “The Act.” During her studies at NYU Gallatin, she starred in Down a Dark Hall (Lionsgate), “Mercy Street” (PBS), and Freakshow. Other titles include “The Carrie Diaries” as Carrie Bradshaw (CW), The Way Way Back (Fox Searchlight), Soul Surfer, and Bridge to Terabithia. Upcoming: Words on Bathroom Walls. She’d like to thank Erica, Red Bull, and the women of Mac Beth for making this an incredible and empowering experience! Ms., Robb performed this role from May 7-June 2,

 

LILY SANTIAGO (Macduff) most recently appeared as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (The Huntington Theatre), Emmy in A Doll’s House, Part 2 (George Street Playhouse), and previously in The New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of Othello. Other credits include In The Red and Brown Water (Oya) and Water By The Spoonful (Yaz). She is a proud graduate of Northwestern University (BA in theater 2018) and LaGuardia Performing Arts HS, and represented by Innovative Artists.

 

AYANA WORKMAN (Banquo) Off-Broadway: The Price of Thomas Scott (Mint Theater) Romeo and Juliet, The Winter’s Tale (The Public Theater), Dos Worlds (Trinity Church), Macbeth (Masterfool Theater Company). Regional: Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley (Cincinnati Playhouse in The Park), Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare Theater Company). International: Julius Caesar at the Globe Theatre (London, England); Virtual Truth at Bunker Theatre (Ljubljana, Slovenia); and Guernica Continuum at SNG Maribor (Maribor, Slovenia). TV: “Person of Interest,” “Jessica Jones.” Ayana received her BFA from Mason Gross School of The Arts at Rutgers University.

​

Production Photography: Carol Rosegg