As the eerie sound of Lavender’s Blue filled the Parabola Arts Centre in May, a full house of parents, teachers and students were at the edge of their seats not knowing what to expect from Living with Lady Macbeth written by Rob John and directed for CLC by Mrs Revell.
What is revealed is a play within a play and, like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it examines issues such as power and ambition. The main character, Lily Morgan, played by Emily (UC4), an outsider and as the popular girls say, “a bit dull”, decides to audition for the part of Lady Macbeth, taking everyone by surprise. As she prepares for the audition, she becomes fixated on her ambition to succeed. Her best friend, boyfriend and family try to talk her out of it, as it is not something Lily would do. In her imagination Lily fantasises, in rather comic fashion, how each of the popular girls would meet their end, which left the audience roaring with laughter as the actors overdramatised and milked their deaths. In the real world, Lily uses the character of Lady Macbeth in the audition to take out all her anger about people’s perceptions of her. Through a passionate performance, she leaves everyone stunned and, once all her emotion and anger is out, settles on doing something backstage, but no one will ever look at Lily in the same way again. Unlike Lady Macbeth, our lead character’s audition does not end in tragedy and the new, confidant Lily is triumphant.
The audition process for the play started in September, and we got our parts in early January, with rehearsals over the course of five months. It was a small ensemble of 12 girls who had a great spirit of camaraderie and enjoyed working on both the comedy and drama within the play to explore their characters. Throughout the ‘death scenes’ there was a lot of physical theatre, which required us to do a lot of trust exercises and balancing. It was a bit tricky at first but as we all got to know and trust each other more, the easier it became. The production was an incredible experience, and we all came away with some kind of new skill, from being able to scream properly to having to stay completely still in a freeze frame.
The play ended on both nights to huge applause and we all felt extremely proud of the play we had produced.
Tara, UC4 (Year 10)
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