THE MACBETH PROJECT

Claire Trevor School of the Arts
Robert Cohen Theatre - Irvine, CA​​

Director: Philip Thompson
Lighting Designer: Sonya Wong
Sound Designer: Pan-Pan Gou
Stage Manager: Nicole Theep

Photos: Isabella Keegan

One of Shakespeare's most well-known tragedies, Macbeth tells the story of the tragic demise of Scottish general Macbeth, who, upon hearing a prophecy from three witches, goes from a once loyal soldier to a man whose greed and ambition cause him to murder the king in order to seize the throne. This production of Macbeth had the added layer of being set in a prison, with a focus on gang violence and mental deterioration that comes from being imprisoned. The lighting for Macbeth was highly stylized, and divided the play into three main worlds: the real world of the prison; the supernatural world of the witches; and the abstract world of Hades, when the characters who died took a moment to exit the stage. The lighting for the first world of the prison used harsh colors and jagged edges as well as ominous shadows in order to express that this is a cruel and tension-filled world. The world of the witches was heavy on the silhouettes with just a hint of facial visibility to create a mysterious and supernatural world. Lastly, the world of the dead was full of saturate colors and uplight angles to add to the unnatural deaths of the characters being murdered.