‘Peace! the charm’s wound up’: Subverting virtual theatre in Big Telly’s Macbeth and Hijinx Theatre’s Metamorphosis
With Shakespeare largely giving way to virtual panto season and a cornucopia of online Christmas Carols over the past month or so, Gemma and I are taking the opportunity in the new year to revisit some of the lockdown theatre highlights of last year that didn’t quite make it into our 2020 coverage.
Over the final two weekends of November 2020, nonprofit organisation The Red Curtain staged The Good Theater Festival — a free event hosted from the organisation’s base in Kolkata, India, which showcased live online performances and virtual theatre productions from around the world. For lockdown Shakespeare enthusiasts, the festival offered a further opportunity to experience Big Telly Theatre Company’s Zoom adaptation of Macbeth. The production had premiered at the Belfast Theatre Festival in mid-October, followed by a ten-day run in collaboration with Creation Theatre Company — concluding appropriately enough on Halloween night. Macbeth opened the first day of The Good Theater Festival on Saturday 21st November at 8.30am UK time (the first time I’ve watched the play over breakfast), with a second performance in the afternoon.
The production won two awards: Best Individual Performance for Nicky Harley as Lady Macbeth; and Most Innovative Use of Technology — an award shared with Hijinx Theatre’s Metamorphosis, which adapted Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella into a virtual theatre experience. Hijinx’s production also bagged Ben Pettitt-Wade the Best Director award, with Big Telly’s Zoë Seaton receiving an Honourable Mention in the same category. Macbeth and Metamorphosis have more than just their success at The Good Theater Festival in common, however: both productions not only showcased innovation through their use of Zoom, but also subverted what audiences have come to expect from virtual theatre this year.
Macbeth began not with ‘thunder and lightning’ (Macbeth, 1.1.0.1) but with a press conference held in a setting all too familiar to those in the UK used to watching government briefings amid the COVID-19 pandemic. By writing their location down and holding it up to their webcam, audience members could be spotlighted on Zoom to take part in a ‘screening process’ to see if they had been in contact with a witch. ‘Safe’ viewers received a green tick, whilst those with a ‘positive result’ had a cartoon witch hat projected above their head through a camera filter. The Chief Science Advisor (Lucia McAnespie) also invited viewers to bring their pets on camera on the advice that animals were also known to be susceptible to witchcraft.
This brand of interactivity would have been familiar to anyone who experienced Big Telly/Creation Theatre’s Zoom adaptation of The Tempest earlier in the year. Indeed, the theatre company has made a name for itself this year through bringing ‘game theatre’ online — not only through The Tempest, but also non-Shakespearean virtual theatre productions such as Operation Elsewhere, an original play based on ancient Irish mythical stories; and Alice: A Virtual Theme Park, which adapted Lewis Carroll’s Alice novels. Seaton is a staunch advocate of game theatre and its power to connect to audiences through ‘inviting people to be playful while respecting people’s right to choose how far they want to go’.¹
Macbeth ostensibly offered a similarly ‘playful’ experience through its opening, but then subverted this playfulness through a significant twist. Following the interactive press conference, the ‘politicians’ were revealed to be the Weird Sisters in disguise, interacting with the audience from an empty theatre they’d inhabited. Those watching were in no doubt from this opening reveal that the witches were firmly in control of everything in this version of Macbeth, with the entire world seemingly fabricated to dupe Macbeth (Dennis Herdman) and Lady Macbeth into their power-hungry downward spiral.
After this opening section, much of the first two acts of Macbeth played out without audience participation, further subverting the Tempest-style interaction suggested in the opening segment. As Macbeth took the throne at the start of Act 3, the shift from black-and-white to vibrant colour, and from the (sur)realistic setting of the Macbeths’ suburban home to the obvious virtual backdrops of the palace, indicated that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were now fully — and unknowingly — immersed in the witches’ magical manipulation. It was also at this point that the interactive elements reappeared. Those with their cameras on were instructed to wave to Macbeth as he rode to his coronation in an ornate carriage, with several obedient audience members spotlighted on screen; this was followed by viewers being seated around Macbeth’s dining table as guests at his banquet. Whilst certainly ‘playful’ and offering similar novelty to that seen in other Big Telly virtual theatre productions, these elements also had a sinister edge: whether they were aware of it or not, audience members featured on screen were part of the witches’ charade. Waving to Macbeth and raising a glass to his coronation made them complicit in the deception of the central couple.
This was furthered when Macbeth went to visit the witches in their empty theatre during Act 4 Scene 1. The witches’ prophecies were delivered through overtly theatrical set pieces; audience members were featured seated in the royal box to watch each performance, with many (myself included) playing along and applauding each ‘performance’. Seaton always gave viewers the choice of whether or not to participate in the interactive elements by having their cameras turned on or off — an essential element of the audience contract with interactive theatre. However, for those who kept their cameras on, this was game theatre with a darker twist: the witches were the ones making the rules of the game, controlling how it was being played, and gulling the audience just as much as the Macbeths. Whereas the king and queen were seemingly none the wiser to the witches’ game, however, those watching had been made fully aware of what was happening from early on, and were either consciously or unconsciously choosing to be part of the magical deception.
Like Big Telly’s Macbeth, Hijinx’s Metamorphosis first played the Good Theater Festival on a Saturday morning UK time — opening the festival’s second weekend on 28th November, with a further performance later the same day. And, like Macbeth, it offered a similar sense of shifting between perspectives on reality in its adaptation of the story, which was overtly and unmistakeably tied to the 2020 moment. Described by the company as ‘a reinterpretation of Franz Kafka’s classic novella for our times’, Hijinx highlighted how the cast had ‘awoke[n] to a different world, without work, forced to reinterpret their profession, their identity, their very worth to the world’, tying their experiences to those of Kafka’s protagonist Gregor Samsa, who ‘was on mute while the world revolved around him’.² Metamorphosis itself appeared to be in a continual state of transformation: the production shifted between scenes adapted from the novella; behind-the-scenes vignettes reminiscent of BBC lockdown sitcom Staged, in which the (fictional) director of the show Morgan (Morgan Thomas) auditioned and then rehearsed with the cast (most of whom played versions of themselves); and interactive interludes hosted by a compère-like character known as the barman (Owen Pugh).
Metamorphosis started with one such interactive segment not based on Kafka. Just as Macbeth’s press conference set up the lockdown theatre conventions the production intended to subvert, so Hijinx’s opening offered a similar sense of theatrical sleight of hand. The audience was welcomed by the barman, who spent the first few minutes jovially explaining how the Zoom webinar format differed from a regular video call — most notably that the audience wouldn’t be able to see or hear each other, and that they would only appear on screen if invited to do so. Having established the rules, director Ben Pettitt-Wade used them to position Metamorphosis as a playful, interactive experience. The barman asked viewers to use Zoom’s ‘raise hand’ function if they’d like to join him at the virtual bar, chatting with them about where they were watching from and ‘passing’ drinks from his screen to theirs — his pint glasses ‘magically’ transforming into teacups, mugs and any other drinking vessels audience members had to hand.
However, as Pugh interacted with ‘punters’, messages began to appear in the chat — seemingly from an audience member — asking where they were and why they couldn’t be seen or heard. Any attempts to explain the Zoom webinar format in the same way as the barman just had (which both Gemma and I tried to do!) were unsuccessful. It soon became apparent that the ‘audience member’, Gareth (Gareth John), was in fact part of the cast as his voice was finally heard — a disembodied voice characterised by confusion and fear. This led to Pugh ‘breaking character’ to address his fellow cast member and removing the virtual bar background to reveal his living room at home, making clear to Gareth — and the audience — that none of what they were seeing was real. In a matter of minutes, the Zoom theatre set-up had been both fully established and completely deconstructed.
Opening Metamorphosis in this way allowed Pettitt-Wade to ingeniously subvert expectations of virtual theatre, with the choice to perform through a Zoom webinar rather than a conference call a master stroke. The director played on the expectation that most audience members would be familiar with Zoom by this point in 2020, but that they may not have experienced a webinar. As a result, the barman’s explanation felt entirely authentic — as well as actually allowing the webinar format to function when needed at points throughout the production. This also allowed Gareth to sincerely come across as a confused viewer, drawing the audience into what initially appeared to be a genuine technical hitch before revealing things were not all as they seemed.
Just as Macbeth’s press conference established the concept of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth obliviously living in a fabricated reality constructed by the witches, so Metamorphosis’s introductory section effectively set up the idea of becoming lost in technology revisited throughout the production. Gareth’s predicament embodied the concept of being ‘on mute while the world revolved around him’ — he was both literally and figuratively ‘lost’ in technology. Metamorphosis presented a sinister alter-ego for technology in 2020. Whilst Zoom and other video conferencing software had allowed countless people across the world to connect with colleagues and loved ones in lockdown, those unable or uncomfortable with navigating these platforms had been left bewildered, alienated and disconnected — much like the transformed Gregor in Kafka’s novella.
This dark subversion of Zoom itself came across further through the production’s interactivity, such as points at which viewers were asked to vote in polls. Whilst these were regularly presented as fun elements of audience participation, the choices to be made were often a lot more sinister. At one point, viewers were asked to choose what to feed a transformed figure (possibly either Gregor or Morgan, but whose identity was intentionally obscure), with the choices on offer including ‘rotten meat’. Just as in Macbeth, viewers could opt out of interacting, but those who did were ultimately choosing to participate in the twisted dystopian world presented by Pettitt-Wade.
The conventions of any medium need first to be established enough for them to be able to be recognisably — and successfully — subverted. The fact that two of the most decorated productions at The Good Theater Festival turned virtual theatre at least partially on its head suggests that the medium and its conventions are now embedded enough for such subversions to work. Challenging expectations in the way both Macbeth and Metamorphosis did at this point in Zoom theatre’s evolution is impactful, creating an experience that is innovative, memorable, and — perhaps most importantly of all — makes you genuinely feel. Both Seaton and Pettitt-Wade took stories already widely known and adapted, and did something new and different with them — making them relevant to our current moment not through throwaway cultural references, but by laying bare the emotions of 2020. Virtual theatre has the power to make audience members feel part of the world of the production in a way that most other forms of performance don’t. Macbeth and Metamorphosis took that power and used it to give those watching — and particularly those interacting — feel a genuine spectrum of emotions, forcing those emotions to juxtapose and contradict each other. If that doesn’t capture the experience of living in lockdown, then I’m not sure what does.
At the time of writing, neither Macbeth nor Metamorphosis have any further scheduled performances. You can find out more about Big Telly Theatre Company, Hijinx Theatre and The Red Curtain at their respective websites.
Production Details
Macbeth
Presented by Big Telly Theatre Company at The Good Theater Festival, 21 November, 2020. Directed by Zoë Seaton. With Dennis Herdman (Macbeth), Nicky Harley (Lady Macbeth), Aonghus Óg McAnally (Witch/King Duncan/Macduff), Lucia McAnespie (Witch/Lady Macduff/Malcolm), and Dharmesh Patel (Witch/Banquo).
Metamorphosis
Presented by Hijinx Theatre at The Good Theater Festival, 28 November, 2020. Directed by Ben Pettitt-Wade. With Dan McGowan, Douglas Rutter, Ffion Gwyther, Gareth John, Hannah McPake, Lindsay Foster, Lucy Green, Michelle McTernan, Morgan Thomas, Owen Pugh, Owen Thompson, and Richard Newnham.
