Mac Wellman once asked us in a Pataphysics workshop what our first memorable experience was in the theater, and I liked hearing the answers so lately, I’ve been asking people too. Macbeth was the first play I ever saw (that I remember). My mom took me to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival every summer and when I was eight she took me to see Jerry Turner’s production in the outdoor theater in Ashland. I still have the program. I also still have an overwhelming sense of dread when I think about that production. I remember even at the age of eight, I experienced a kind of hysterical empathy with the character of Macbeth, I became convinced that I too was a potential murderer. I had insomnia for weeks, I stayed awake obsessively telling God he didn’t exist “you don’t exist! you don’t!” like I was challenging him/her/it to prove that it did. Later I asked my mom, “What do you do if your mind keeps thinking something you don’t want it to think?” – something Macbeth probably wished he could ask his mom. My mom told me I should simply tell my mind to stop thinking it, a philosophical position I was not prepared to argue against. In all fairness, she had no idea why I was asking the question. Probably she assumed I was thinking about David Cassidy.
We also had that amazing Charles and Mary Lamb Shakespeare book at our house and I spent months examining the picture where Macbeth is killing Duncan. I nearly destroyed the page. I can still vividly remember the big beards and the nightgowns and a huge dagger dripping with blood. I was both horrified and entranced by this illustration.
When I was grown up I saw the play in Russia, done by Bolshoi Drama Theater in St. Petersburg – it was kind of a hacky production with the Duncan stumbling bloody out of his chamber to die right on top of Lady M. It did start the brilliant Alissa Freundlich (from Tarkovsky’s Solaris) but it wasn’t otherwise very good. However, my Russian boyfriend was seriously freaked out when we got home, he kept muttering that “the spells are real! The spells are real!” and tried to convince me that the reason the reason the play is because Shakespeare included actual spells in the text that when spoken…well you get where I’m going with that.
Anyway, I was just reading Sara Ruhl’s short essays on Device and in number 13 “The Scary” (http://device.papertheatre.org/?p=21) in which she quotes Mac as saying that theater is so rarely scary any more, and what a terrible challenge it is to write a play that actually induces fear. I keep thinking about that, and how I wish I could write a scary play one day because a play that incites actual terror really wakes up the brain – a rush of actual and metaphysical adrenalin. It has the power to cause people to question what they actually believe, to lay awake at night wondering what, if anything, is lurking in the dark.
If anyone is lurking in the dark beyond this obscure blog, I have two questions: Are there any plays that have actually scared you?
and
Do you remember the play that made you want to be a writer or actor or whatever it is you are today?
