Blog Name

We got rather a late start tonight, and we had a long check-in when we did get going. In the midst of that, one of the women told me that a staff member with whom we have a lot of contact mentions Shakespeare every time she sees her, no matter where they are. She tells people what a good actress she is, and how impressed with her work she is. It makes this woman feel really good, and it’s another example of how this type of programming can help to positively affect the culture of the prison—this woman didn’t even know that the staff member knew who she was!

Tonight we embarked on casting as planned! After our check-in, we grabbed chairs and circled up.

As anticipated, most casting was settled on quickly and easily – there was almost no overlap between first choices. Where multiple people were interested in the same role, we worked together to find compromises. The most exciting compromise was between two women who wanted to play the Third Witch. One of them leaves early on Tuesdays for another commitment, so the other one agreed to understudy/role share to avoid holding up rehearsals with absences; this woman is taking on another role that she really wanted as well.

We revisited Act IV scene ii and the ongoing debate about Lady Macduff’s son’s age. We are still divided on this – some really think he’s under the age of 11, and some feel firmly that he’s older. We discussed textual evidence for both interpretations, and then one woman said that she thought he might be a young teen with the mentality of a younger child. I asked her what evidence there was in the text for that – I hadn’t seen any – and she pointed out specific passages that illustrated her point. So it’s there.

We were a little unfocused to begin with tonight, but we got back on track pretty quickly after playing one of our favorite circle games. It got very silly, to the point where nearly everyone in the room was laughing. Then, feeling more relaxed and ready to work, we got back to exploring scenes from the play.

We began tonight with a fairly long check-in. This is a particularly difficult time of year for incarcerated people, and we tend to relax our structure to make room for everyone to share and get as much support as she needs.

We’ve been so focused on reading the play that we haven’t done as much improv as we’d like, so we spent some time playing “Freeze,” which is a fantastic game for getting used to thinking on our feet. It’s also really fun. Even though some of the scenes were duds (… many of those were mine. I was the weakest link tonight, without question.), we had a good time and gave each other a ton of support. During one scene in which two women were running a marathon in Africa while being chased by wild animals, several women who were watching started making animal noises to give the actors more to work with. In one quiet moment, one woman made some… interesting… “animal sounds.” The woman next to her slowly turned to look at her, barely containing her hilarity, and said, “Dude, what kind of animal was THAT?” The woman who’d made the sound shrugged her shoulders – she didn’t know, either – and we all laughed.

Today we had a journalist and videographer from Detroit’s local CBS station at our meeting. Despite his trunk full of equipment, we got into the prison in record time. In the programs building, we were met by a group of administrators, including the warden himself.

Far from being thrown off by the camera and administrators in the room, the women seemed energized as they came in. It has usually been true that the worries they have about being on camera while doing the—often silly—things we do in warm-ups usually disappear in a few minutes. Soon after we begin, few women glance at the cameras, and our meetings proceed mostly as normal.

The ensemble began with a couple of improv games this evening, continuing to build trust and laugh together. But we want to get to the end of this play, so before long we hunkered down to read some more.

We got those who were absent on Friday up to speed on Act IV scene iii, and then we continued on to Act V scene i, the famous sleepwalking scene. Several women mused that passion used to bring Lady and Macbeth together, and now guilt is tearing them apart.

Tonight two of our ensemble members checked in to let us know that they are temporarily leaving the group. One is a new member who has apprehensions about working specifically with Macbeth, and she says she’ll be back in the fall. The other is a woman who stayed on from last season. Her reasons for leaving are personal and have to do with taking the best care of herself that she can right now. She also intends to return next fall.

Tonight we welcomed in a number of new and returning ensemble members. It felt so good to have those familiar faces back in the room, and it was so exciting to start to work with our new participants.

We began with a fun name game and then circled up to ask our traditional three questions:

What brings you to Shakespeare?
What do you hope to get out of this experience?
What is the gift that you bring?

We spent our entire time tonight exploring Act III scene iv, in which the ghost of Banquo visits a banquet hosted by the Macbeths. We read through it, made sure everyone was on the same page in terms of plot, and then the discussion began.

“Is he drunk?” one woman asked about Macbeth, right off the bat. “Sometimes when we’re drunk, we say too much. I know I did.” We mused briefly that he certainly could be drunk, and then the conversation veered away from that and to a focus on the ghost – is it a hallucination or actually there?