Macbeth Project
by Nick Fracaro
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
April Sweeney
Markus Hirnigel
Cynthia Croot
Libby Emmons
David Marcus
Matt Korahais
Jacob Zimmer
Melanie Dreyer
Mara McCann
Nick Fracaro
Gabriele Schafer
Russell Busch
Erik Ehn
Although many are virtual strangers here now, whatever “public” there is within this email group will dissolve as the project progresses. The number 13 intrigues. Jesus and the twelve apostles (Judas as necessary as the Christ) became the metaphysical Church itself but minus its godhead which remains outside somewhere… “Abba, Abba, why hast thou forsaken me?”
So who is the baker of this Baker’s Dozen? And as the email becomes more public now (the rat-list and its ripple), as the project finds its first stage in Argentina, does the group and/or godhead reposition? And at what stage does studying (acting) the script Macbeth become living the script Macbeth?
We stumble into the Scottish play’s curse as Macbeth stumbles into the Weird Sisters as we all have stumbled into our lives in this fair and foul (Western Judeo-Christian?) world. Macbeth is the condition of our birth in Original Sin. So Paradise Lost, we all grow as suckling on a witches’ teat, recovering from our amnesia slowly. The Weird Sisters is the recouped ancient memory is the manifestation of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Integral to the essence of Knowledge, the carnal snake slithers through its branches, the tongue that speaks. Flesh belongs correctly to the echelon of elements (fire, earth, air, water) and possesses knowledge fragments beyond its blood memory, seducing also with its prescience. Our physical sense of déjà vu is also precursor and prophet of the future event. Been there; done that; will do again.
The Word has become Flesh; its dialogue within knowledge (the other elements) is the eternal event. The letter Lady Macbeth receives is as fruit from the Tree delivered to her by her husband. She will play Eve and eat first. This dialogue/action becomes “the be-all and the end-all-here” of knowledge, gametes at fecundation, the serpent swallowing its own tail.
Potentially the rat meet is a gathering of warriors and witches exchanging methods and potions. Yet the reality is that the dominant tendency in rat has always been toward becoming a la-dee-dah kingdom of brats. Luckily there have also always been enough Macbeths in rat’s psychology to frustrate King Duncan’s stratagem to fund and grant his cronies from the spoils of the war. Macbeth is the anarchic suicide king. He continually pulls rat back to ground zero, the site of the last and first rat conference.
I imagine the story this way. Soldier Macbeth never escapes the battlefield except in letters to and from his wife.
They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course.
Lady Macbeth in San Francisco receives missives from Argentina. The somnambulist tries to join her mate but ends writing letters in the air. Translation of rat in progress.