MACBETH, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, 2025

MACBETH

APRIL 4–5, 2025

DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE

James Bundy, Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean Florie Seery, Associate Dean

Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Carla L. Jackson, Assistant Dean Nancy Yao, Assistant Dean

PRESENTS

Macbeth

By William Shakespeare

Adapted by Jasmine Brooks and Tia Smith

Directed by Jasmine Brooks

Creative Team

Scenic Designer

Karen Loewy Movilla

Costume Designer

Lyle Laize Qin

Lighting Designer

Amanda Burtness

Sound Designer and Original Music Xi (Zoey) Lin 林曦

Projection Designer

Jae Lee

Production Dramaturg

Tia Smith

Technical Director

Matthew Phillips

Movement Choreographer

Andrew Rodriguez

Fight and Intimacy Directors

Kelsey Rainwater

Michael Rossmy

Stage Managers

Whitney Renell Roy

Hope Binfeng Ding Cast

Macbeth.................................................................................. Mariah Copeland

Lady Macbeth, Witch 2 ...................................................... Lauren F. Walker

Lennox, Murderer 1, Messenger, Witch 3 Tyler Clarke Ross, Attendant, Young Siward, Witch 4.............................. Emma Steiner

Banquo, Lady Macduff, Seyton, Witch 5 ....................... Caroline Campos

Malcolm, Fleance, Witch 6 ................................................... Gretta Marston

Macduff, Sergeant, Murderer 2, Witch 7 .................................. Henita Telo

Old Man, King Duncan, Macduff’s Son, Porter, Doctor, Apparition ............................Marlon Alexander Vargas

Setting

Past. Here and now. Tomorrow.

Macbeth is performed without an intermission.

Content Guidance

This production contains the depiction of murder and suicide and the use of blinding lights, bright lights, strobe projections, fog, and haze.

This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.

Artistic

Projection Design Advisor

Christian Killada

Assistant Sound Designer and Engineer

Nat King Taylor

Assistant Stage Manager

Colleen Rooney

Production

Production Manager

Kino Alvarez

Assistant Technical Director

Md Fadzil ‘Fed’ Hanafi

Md Saad

Production Electrician

David DiFabio

Projection Engineer

Leo Surach

Lighting Programmers

Gib Gibney

Ankit Pandey

Projection Programmer

Doaa Ouf

Scenic Charge Artist

Gwendoline Chen

Associate Safety Advisors

Jazzmin Bonner, Matteo

Lanzarotta, Alesandra Reto

Lopez, Meredith Wilcox

Run Crew

Andreas Andreou, Nickie

Dubick, Tom Minucci, Kristen Taylor, Davon Williams Administration

Associate Managing Director

Jeremy Landes

Assistant Managing Director

Sarah Saifi

Management Assistant

Jocelyn Lopez-Hagmann

House Manager

Maura Bozeman

Production Photographer

T.Charles Erickson

David Geffen School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.

Special Thanks

Destyne R. Miller; Andreas Andreou; the entire stage management cohort, especially swing SMs Rethabile and ty, and in-the-room supports, Amanda, Ellora, Josie, and Jonathan.

Yale acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.

We also acknowledge the legacy of slavery in our region and the enslaved African people whose labor was exploited for generations to help establish the business of Yale University as well as the economy of Connecticut and the United States.

The Shakespeare Repertory Projects are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process.

THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND , established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Program from 1993 until his death in 2005.

Macbeth in Sable

In 1977, two legendary Black actresses played Lady Macbeth in New York City at the same time. Barbara Montgomery (b. 1939) starred in Macbeth at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club while Esther Rolle (1920–1998) headlined a revival of “Voodoo” Macbeth, the famed 1936 adaptation set in Haiti, at the New Federal Theatre. To celebrate two Black Lady Macbeths taking the stage, The New York Times printed a photo of Montgomery and Rolle together. The image foreshadows a production like ours in which both Macbeth and his wife are portrayed by Black women. Echoing Macbeth, Montgomery claims power in the photo. She frames her face with her hands, a gesture that seems to crown herself monarch. Rolle hovers over Montgomery. Like Lady, she is intoxicated with ambition. She triumphantly holds her head upwards while donning a satisfied smile.

Black women are no strangers to Macbeth. In his landmark book Shakespeare in Sable, Errol Hill (David Geffen School of Drama ’62) spotlights the career of Henrietta Vinton Davis (1860–1941), who toured the U.S. performing Shakespearean monologues and scenes. In 1884, she portrayed Lady Macbeth opposite actor Powhatan Beaty in scenes from “the Scottish Play.” Considered one of the greatest performers of her time, racism barred Davis from playing one of the Bard’s leading ladies in a full production. In 1931, Anne Cooke Reid a.k.a. “Queen Anne” (1907–1997)—who went on to earn her PhD in theater from the Department of Drama and Graduate School at Yale in 1944— directed Macbeth at women’s HBCU Spelman College. During the late 20th century, Angela Bassett (the Geffen School ’83) and others joined Montgomery and Rolle as Black Lady Macbeths.

Our production uplifts the centuries-long history of cross-gender casting in Shakespearean plays. During the Bard’s time (1564–1616), male actors embodied all of his roles, including women. In our

Macbeth, actresses take center stage as thanes and rulers in addition to witches and wives. Women breathe new life into 400-year-old male characters by reinterpreting the deadly concoction of ruthless ambition, masculinity, and fate. In the 19th and 20th centuries, white actresses such as Charlotte Cushman, Sarah Bernhardt, and Eva La Gallienne rose to stardom for their portrayals of leading Shakespearean men. Today, Black women, such as members of Mawa Theatre Company— the U.K.’s first all-Black, all-female Shakespeare company—claim the Bard’s heroes as their own. In 2020, Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga garnered acclaim in the titular role in a Dublin production of Hamlet. Two years later, she played Lady Macbeth on Broadway while Danai Gurira performed Richard III for The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park.

According to scholar Joyce Green MacDonald, “Writing [B]lack women’s stories into reworked Shakespeares is a way of writing them into a history that has worked to efface or misvalue them, their works, and their lives.” Our adaptation stems from a Black and female perspective. Macbeth’s themes map on Blackness and womanhood with ease. For director Jasmine Brooks and me, Macbeth’s deteriorating psyche recalls the fragmented mind of Sarah in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro. His desire to declare himself king lives in rapper Dana Owens’s self-naming as Queen Latifah and in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s crown motif. The ritual we have conjured with our flock of witches calls upon Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman. In all, we explore the universality of Macbeth’s story with regard to gender and race. Embodied by women, in Macbeth, the humanness of the hunger for power, the betrayal of friendship, and the guilt of immorality is shown.

—Tia Smith, Production Dramaturg and Co-Adaptor