Great Scott! 'Macbeth' Comes to Princeton

If a love of Shakespeare makes a solid foundation for a director taking on one of the Bard’s plays, then Alexandra Kolaski was off to a great start when she started working on “Macbeth.”

Kolaski, who is directing Princeton Shakespeare Company’s production of “Macbeth,” running Oct. 20 to Oct. 22, was first introduced to Shakespeare’s works when she was in third or fourth grade. The plays continue to influence her in important way – she says a Shakespeare course she took during her freshman year is a major reason why she’s an English major.

“My interest in Shakespeare is purely from an absolute love of the shows and the text, of the unbelievably elegant, timeless quality of the verse that Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago,” Kolaski says. “I think it’s just actually incredible. I’m entirely nerdy about Shakespeare.”

Kolaski is a member of Princeton University’s class of 2013, and previously directed “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare” for the student-run Princeton Shakespeare Company. She’ll be bringing her nerd-like passion to “Macbeth,” which she says is her favorite Shakespeare play, and one she believes often takes a back seat to “Hamlet.”

“I think more than many of the other ones, the message of the play – the questions of ambitions or villainy or manipulation or just violence in society – are very transferrable messages to pretty much any time period or place,” Kolaski says.

For anyone unfamiliar with “Macbeth,” it follows the title character (played by Pete Mende-Siedlecki) who is visited by three witches (Uchechi Kalu, Bonnie Rogers and Maeli Goren) with various titles, including Thane of Cawdor and King. The witches tell Macbeth that Banquo’s children, not his, will be kings after him.

Macbeth then learns that King Duncan (Merell Noden) has executed the Thane of Cawdor and is placing Macbeth in the post. With the help of his power-hungry wife (Savannah Hankins), Macbeth sets into motion a plan to fulfill the witches’ prophesy, while preventing Banquo’s children from inheriting the throne.

Kolaski first discovered “Macbeth” when she was a kid and her mother gave her a book of adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays written in prose. While working on her staging, she went back to that book.

“It was very interesting to go back and read the things that they chose to emphasize from the text that maybe I, subconsciously because of that, have chosen to highlight in my performance of the actual Shakespearean text, which was really funny,” she says.

“Macbeth” is set in Scotland (because of superstitions it’s often referred to as “the Scottish play” by theater folk), but Kolaski’s staging isn’t placed in a specific time or location. Dress is modern, with warriors wearing cargo pants and T-shirts while the powerful characters don tuxes and gowns.

“It sort of falls into an ambiguous time period, and that was my goal, to leave it ambiguous,” Kolaski says.

An important element of her production is the use of six 4-foot by 8-foot mirrors to create moments of reflection for actors and audiences.

“My idea is that part of the problem in this story is that the characters just don’t seem to reflect on the decisions they’re making,” Kolaski says. “Lady Macbeth doesn’t take a moment to think what her influence on her husband is going to be, Macbeth doesn’t take a moment to think of what the political and psychological consequences of his actions might be. I wanted to physically force the characters on stage to really reflect on themselves, on their positions as they move through the show.”

Shakespeare’s poetic language offers several challenges to actors. Kolaski says early rehearsals for actors were spent understanding the language. Once that was achieved, it became about interpreting characters and preparing to act, as opposed to reciting poetry on stage.

“The text is often very difficult,” she says. “There were times when (Hankins) and I would sit down and just go through script and be like, ‘I don’t know what this word means. Let’s go through and define it in a methodical way and figure out what we’re trying to say and what your character is really feeling.’”

As much as Kolaski loves “Macbeth,” she’s never seen a production of it. She started watching a filmed adaptation starring Patrick Stewart but didn’t get through much of it.

“I watched the first 10 minutes of that but it was so scary with the witches that I couldn’t continue watching,” she says with a laugh. “I literally had to stop watching because I was too scared. The final product (of this production) will be my first true full-length Macbeth experience so we’ll see how that goes.”

Princeton Shakespeare Company will stage Macbeth at the Frist Performance Theatre on the campus of Princeton University Oct. 20 to 22 with performances at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $8. For information, visit www.princeton.edu/~psc.