Eighth Graders Take to the Stage in Speyer's Third Annual Performance of "Macbeth"!
Slide aside the salad bar, it is time for “The Scottish Play”! Yes, for the third year, Speyer’s Dining Hall became the stage for our eighth graders to present their own unique take on the Bard's famous tragedy. The third annual performance was a direct result of their exploration of the themes in the play as they immersed themselves in the study of Mac**** aka “The Scottish Play.” (There is, as you may know, a theatrical tradition of bad luck associated with saying the name out loud and… well, read on to see if it’s true.)
Approaching the work as Jacobean 14-year-olds (most of whom could not read), the students first watched the play (the one starring Patrick Stewart, set in the Soviet Union) and then began a performance-based drama workshop co-facilitated by Mr. Deards and alumni parent (and director/actor) Rik Walter. Classrooms were deconstructed and the students explored meaning, denotation and connotation, subtext, and the power of internal dialogue or soliloquy by acting scenes.
They considered which of reading, watching, and performing gave the purest access to the play and wondered, as part of the empathy curriculum that runs through Speyer, why they were pained to watch the remorse-wracked, sleepwalking Lady Macbeth. They wondered if it was because, as they watched the consequences of making a decision that you know is wrong, that Shakespeare was suggesting to the audience that this could be you. And they went further, considering that perhaps all great literature is prompting us to identify with (and if necessary suffer with) characters dealing with circumstances so that hopefully we will not have to also suffer that same fate.
As the students prepared for a performance (putting the main character of Macbeth on trial), they had the great fortune to see a live performance at the Hunter College theater with the play performed by an all-female cast and set in a present day boarding school. Being Speyer students, they had a deep and profound understanding of the text by then and were delighted by the experience, anticipating events and big speeches, fascinated to note and judge the decisions that the actors were making. They were effervescent leaving the theatre (although a couple may have reconsidered their boarding school applications).
On the night of the performance in Speyer’s transformed Dining Hall, parents saw what fully committed learning results in. We had a live musical score penned by a student, which added depth and richness as motifs for characters were introduced and then reiterated. We had a slew of passionate and profound and deeply moving scenes and, because of a slew of (curse-induced?) illness, several students picking up parts at no notice and performing them flawlessly.
We also saw the students reflect on the central issue of the play (and perhaps eighth grade Humanities) and that is the question of agency. Macbeth could only be found guilty at trial if he knew what he was doing and had control over his actions. Through all our studies of history and literature, we keep reminding ourselves that yes, we have agency and must make decisions about how we will contribute to history, and we should make them responsibly. The reason that the Scottish Play is, ultimately, so powerful a student concluded, because Macbeth does have agency and makes bad decisions, and the repercussions are dire and a warning to us all.
Reflecting afterwards, students applauded one another for courage and for tapping skills they had no idea they had. The unit certainly brought everyone closer together (putting on a play is the most demanding social and emotional curriculum there is) and yet, this was just another example of the maxim that Speyer students really can learn without limit. Mr. Walter told the cast afterwards that no professional actors would have attempted to pull of so sophisticated a production in so short a time, let alone achieve it with such magnificence. Congratulations to all! Bravo!