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Drums and Shadows
Rand Theater UMASS Fine Arts Center, May 2003
Shadowcasters:: Glenn Sturgis, Marta Macrostie, Davyn Turchiano, Lucas Maloney, Kai Ravelson, Erica Billings.
Sound Design/Composer: Eduardo Leandro
Drums and Shadows by Timothy Matos
reprinted with permission of The Puppetry Journal
Over the last six years, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Theater
Department has become a laboratory for the puppetry of scenic designer
Miguel Romero. As an undergraduate student of Romero's in 1996, the year
he instituted this puppetry workshop series, I know first hand how lucky
students were to receive this early introduction to the otherwise rarified
world of puppetry. In the fall of 2002, Romero contacted me about collaborating
on a puppet adaptation of a Shakespeare play. With dramaturg Dominica
Borg, we began discussing the possibility of turning Shakespeare's Macbeth
into a puppet show utilizing the mask aesthetics of Larry Reed. The result
was Drums and Shadows, a fiendishly macabre display of shadow puppet technique,
which premiered in May of 2003 in the University's Rand Theater.
The artistic team, which also included Costume Designer June Gaeke and
Sound Designer/Musician Eduardo Leandro, recognized that Drums and Shadows
would have to interact, deliberately and consciously, with audience expectations.
Since Macbeth is a play that most people in a collegiate environment have
at least a passing acquaintance with, we decided that it was necessary
to exploit those moments in the play that could be considered definitive.
Now, anyone who has ever adapted a text for the puppet stage (be it a
play, short story or folk tale) understands that a one to one correlation
between the original and the adaptation is impossible. However, we were
also keenly aware of the danger of getting so far off track that the final
product became something wholly other. We were determined to produce a
successful adaptation.
Obviously, adapting a play and turning it into a shadow show requires
taking an essentially verbal medium and translating it to a spectacular
medium. We decided, wisely I think, to cut out as much of the text as
possible. The little bit of text we kept served two purposes: either to
inform the audience of something that could not be done by visual means
or to insert a piece of definitive dialogue that the audience expected
to hear. We decided to prerecord and distort all the voices and pipe them
through the house system. This allowed the voices to sound as if they
were disembodied, as if they were a part of the universe of the piece
rather than dialogue coming from the individual characters. For example,
the show opened in darkness with the words, distorted and repeating, "Fair
is foul and foul is fair." This Shakespearean commonplace, it is
my belief, relieved audience anxiety about the nature of the adaptation.
In essence, they were more willing to accept our variations because we
had "promised" them that they would still get to see the play
as they remembered it.
There were two moments when we decided to keep relatively large chunks
of text intact. Quite possibly the most successful element of the show,
and this is no surprise, was the madness of Lady Macbeth. Since the show
was largely black and white, we added here a red gel to one of our projectors
to further accentuate the drama of this moment. Lady Macbeth, bathed in
red, sat on the floor as a fan blew her hair, which had been in a tight
bun the entire show, wildly about. She wrung her hands--a simple and easily
recognizable gesture-- while the well-known speech played. We handled
Macbeth's "Out, out, brief candle" speech in a similar manner.
The rest of the show was purposefully devoid of dialogue to keep the pace
moving. However, to provide further contact between the characters, Eduardo
Leandro supplied ambient noise with the help of a team of student Foley
artists. Using a wide assortment of found object and homemade percussion
instruments, they were able to provide both the "music" and
the missing dialogue. For example, in the sequence where Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth discuss killing Duncan, the two student musicians played upon
two differently sized pots with an inch or so of water in them. By adjusting
the depth of the water and banging either on the shallower or deeper end,
they were able to bend the notes so that various intonations were possible.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth had a remarkably complex discussion without ever
speaking a word of Elizabethan verse. That Macbeth and his wife are plotting
Duncan's death is disturbingly clear, although the only dialogue provided
throughout the sequence merely states that the king is coming to the castle
that night.
Romero's design combined double faced shadow masks mounted on helmets
(ala Larry Reed), worn by puppeteers who were lit by one of many hand-held
or stationary light units, and puppets and backgrounds projected from
one of two overhead projectors. The handheld light sources were equipped
with dimmers and could be used to alter the angle of the light. The puppeteers
could morph sizes depending on their relationship to the light source
and the screen. We took full advantage of this ability to manipulate body
shape and size every chance we got. In the sequence when Banquo is killed--a
scene we decided to stage--the assassin starts out larger than life, dwarfing
the human sized Banquo, before he moves in for the kill. On a twenty-five
foot screen, this can be rather poignant and powerful.
The majority of our time in rehearsal was spent in either timing the four
light sources or reworking the text. Double images can be a harrowing
problem in a show with so many light sources. The puppeteers needed to
be flexible because this process demanded that they (literally) wear many
hats. The student puppeteers had to learn how to work with the masks on
the screen, how to work the projectors and how to control the different
light sources. It was very delicate and time-consuming work.
As for the text, we decided to cut Macduff's subplot and focus primarily
on the Macbeths and Fleance. Romero's most interesting design choice is
easily the puppet of Fleance as king. He designed a puppet made up of
four Fleance cutouts attached to a railing in which one of the light sources
could be slid along. As the light source is slid along the railing, it
appears on screen as if the heads are fading into one another. It was
a powerful visceral image designed to dramatize the line of kings that
would descend from Fleance. In fact, it was the final moment of the puppet
show. We also decided to take a cue from Akira Kurasawa's Throne of Blood
and transform the three witches into a singular entity. The demonic baby-head
that was chosen for our forest spirit was quite possibly the most terrifying
projection in the entire show. More than one small child hid in his seat
whenever it was on screen.
Romero clearly excels at exploiting the picturesque qualities of shadow
puppetry. For example, when Macbeth is fantasizing about being king, a
ghostly crown appears to him, and it disappears as he reaches for it.
The situation repeats with a ghostly knife as he contemplates murdering
Duncan. Also, near the end of the show, Macbeth literally appears inside
a blue-green cutout of his own head-- another instance where we decided
to use color to emphasize divergence from the "normal" reality
of the piece. While in his own head, he relives the stabbing of Duncan--a
moment we did not see when it actually happened earlier in the narrative
sequence. Then he encounters the ghost of Banquo for the second time--a
repetition of a previous encounter. However, we quickly realized that
the danger of such a show was that it easily reduced itself to a collection
of sharp images rather than an entirely cohesive whole.
We realized that only working collaboratively in rehearsal with the student
puppeteers would allow us to solve the problem. Romero worked behind the
screen while I watched from the audience--some nights I also videotaped
rehearsals. We decided to focus on the opening battle sequence, only referenced
at the beginning of Shakespeare's play. The battle sequence, as we staged
it, opens with the image of King Duncan putting horseman on a medieval
map. This even-handed, chess-like beginning ends with a blast from a conch
shell (yes, an actual conch shell) which segues into a vigorous hand to
hand combat sequence. We then added a second layer of duelists to add
depth and dimension. Finally, we projected ranks of horseman making their
way across the battlefield. We spent time every rehearsal reworking that
sequence. The scene certainly achieved movement, and added some much-needed
variety to the show, but I'm not sure we were ever quite satisfied with
it.
What we learned most from working on this show is that the screen is our
only master. If it doesn't look right or move well on the screen, then
it must be sacrificed. Shadow puppetry pares performance down to its basics:
light, movement, sound. The precision with which these elements are manipulated
ultimately determines the success of the show.
