Dram Tree Shakespeare Company will tackle one of the world’s most famous tragedies, Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” for its debut production.
Named for a cypress tree on the banks of the Cape Fear River that served as a landmark to Colonial mariners, the company wants to make Shakespearean plays affordable and understandable to everyone without changing the original dialogue.
“I think a lot of people are turned off when things get too stiff,” said Gil Johnson, who plays Macbeth. “Our play is not a lot of guys standing around with their hands on their hips talking loud. It’s very accessible.”
Johnson, whose 20 years of acting experience include a three-month program in England with the Royal Shakespeare Company, said the show is performed in the round.
“It’s something I’ve never done before,” he said. “The stage is right in the middle of the warehouse, and the audience sits all the way around it. You’re not just playing forward; you’re playing forward, backward and to both sides. It’s very hard, but it’s a lot of fun.”
Johnson said Dram Tree’s artistic director Chris Marino, a former faculty member of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., is an expert at working with Shakespeare’s text.
“He’s very knowledgeable about text work and finding the rhythm and meaning of the text,” Johnson said. “He doesn’t come in and just block the show.”
Hannah Elizabeth Smith, who will play Lady Macbeth, said rehearsing with Marino has been a continuing education in theater.
“Chris has been so open and so willing about helping me learn and find different meanings within the text we can play,” she said. “He’s an endless well of knowledge.”
Smith, a creative writing student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, said rehearsing the dialogue for her first Shakespearean role has been challenging.
“I had to do a lot of practice,” she said. “I’ve been tapping my hand against my leg on the stressed syllables.”
Smith also said although she is not a violent person, she can relate to Lady Macbeth’s willingness to go through extreme measures to fulfill her passions.
“She used it in a negative way, and it ended up destroying her husband, her marriage and her country,” Smith said.
With a variety of on-stage experience and four years of acting in student films at UNCW and the Savannah College of Art and Design under her belt, Smith wants to make a career out of acting.
“It’s always been the most foremost desire in my heart,” she said.
Performances are scheduled to take place at McEachern’s Warehouse in downtown Wilmington Thursdays-Sundays, Sept. 11-27 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 each ($10 for students) on Thursdays and Sundays, and $25 ($20 for students) on Fridays and Saturdays. To purchase tickets, call 800-838-3006 or visit www.dramtreeshakespeare.org/events.html
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