The image below shows the order of the piece thus far with some additions made including the introduction of the Witches and of Lady Macbeth's manipulation and how they factor into Macbeth's development in character:
We then moved on to running the piece fully. There was some discussion concerning the Student part at the start of the piece as to what their voices should be saying. We said that the things said by the Voices should be done in rapid succession to replicate the state of most student's brains in an exam situation. Moreover, the Voices should be aware that they can't speak into the student's shoulders when talking to them because the sound becomes muffled. The video below shows our first attempt at running the scene:
We then moved onto the Hero sequence with a transition whereby the Voices had already walked off and Kathryn as the Facilitator would introduce the Hero interpretation of Macbeth. The transition from the Hero to the Villain included examples prior where Macbeth had shown himself as being evil such as killing Duncan and Banquo. The issue with these is that we didn't introduce who we are as a company nor did we factor in that the TA will already know this and so it will seem like we're being condescending.
The transition between the Villain scene and the Lady Macbeth scene was also very condescending because we told them through facilitation of the differing reasons for Macbeth's change in character - his ambition, the Witches' prophecies, and Lady Macbeth's manipulation - however, this is something the TA will probably already know, especially those at higher levels.
Overall, I think that these two hours were not well spent and thus resulted in a waste. It also caused myself, in particular, to become annoyed especially because I felt like I was coming up with the majority of ideas.
We spent the following hour with Chipp editing and refining the piece thus far. The Voices were made much more refined with set lines very similar or exactly the same as the lines said in the exact video. On the end of this, Chipp added a moment where the Voices pause after they have started panicking anew in panicked positions, very large and exaggerated at that. We then have some facilitation from the other cast members, explaining who N2C are, what we're going to help them with, and removing everyone but the Voices from the stage. Chipp added in a minion joke here, however, as a cast we believe that the TA won't find it amusing as it seems much too dumbed down - it would most likely get them to oppose us, rather than get them on our side as we hope for with the Voices sketch.
We also worked on improving the Hero Macbeth portion of the piece where we had Kathryn reading out the Shakespearean words and myself and Izzy translating them into modern day English whilst the rest of the cast run through the physical movement. The physical movement would pause for Kathryn the majority of the time, however, it would continue during the translation. As the physical movement develops it explains what the words are much more effectively than if they were merely translated and so the decision was made to only have 4 points of translation and have the physical movement portray the rest.
I think that with the presence of Chipp directing the piece that this hour went much better than the previous two hours because the work ethic of the group changed and thus we were able to have more meaningful conversations and input into the piece. I would want this ethic to continue even without a teacher's presence but I know that this would be impossible because of the sheer size of the group. Nevertheless, I hope that with Chipp's input we will be able to complete the task set by the client to her standard and be relatable to our TA.
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