“Out of all the eight years, I think this is the most challenging thing I’ve ever had to do,” Lukens said of training for the upcoming play. “I’m finishing my work early in class and pulling out my script. There’s so much text, and you want to make sure it’s completely accurate because you have to do it justice.”
“Macbeth,” opening Nov. 8 at Camas High, is as linguistically and physically challenging as any Shakespeare production. The script is technically difficult and the play is no light-hearted romp.
“One of the major themes in ‘Macbeth’ is power, and how one acquires it and how one deals with it once one gets it,” Sean Kelly, Camas High theater instructor and “Macbeth” director, said. “There’s a lot of experimentation with and toying with the idea of gender as we understand it in a binary and mixing those lines. Shakespeare does a really beautiful job of questioning: What is it to be a man and what is it to be a woman?”
Power, violence, gender — all sum up high school pretty well. But Kelly thinks these concepts will strike a chord with a wider audience, too, in a rapidly shifting societal climate. With all this to digest, presented in what can seem like a foreign language, Kelly is making an extra effort to keep audiences engaged: he’ll stage “Macbeth” in the round, meaning viewers will be seated closely on all four sides of the action.
“You can’t really ignore the audience under that circumstance. So, it’s going to be a very intimate performance, a very powerful performance. It’s my favorite way to present Shakespeare,” Kelly said.