Articulations
Austin playwrights are drawing attention around the nation, and one theatre company is getting hit by the Macbeth curse smack in the face.
By Robert Faires, Fri., Oct. 27, 2000
Playwright Recognition
Austin's playwrights aren't nearly as well-known nationally as its musicians, but that may not be the case for long. A number of the folks who pen dramas for our stages are drawing increased attention from the entities that fund and develop new plays.
Don't Mess With Macbe ... Um, That Play
Marshall Ryan Maresca, who directed the female-dominated Disciples of Melpomene production of Macbeth running currently at the John Henry Faulk Living Theatre, was not one to put much stock in the old stories of the Scottish Play's curse. But in the last couple of weeks, he and the cast of his Macbeth have seen the kind of mishaps that have fueled the play's evil rep for four centuries. "The day you run my statement that 'the curse hasn't hit us,'" he notified me by e-mail, "Rebecca Robertson, our Macduff, gets hit square in the face during one of the fight scenes. She turned out to be all right, save the welt on her left cheek, and finished the show without any further problem." Then, he adds, in another performance the same weekend, "it hit Alison Terry (who plays Fleance, Young Siward, and a few others). During one of the fight sequences, she got hit, cutting her face. She finished the show, but then went to the E.R. to get stitches. You'll be glad to know that the cast all decided to have a brush-up fight rehearsal." The Disciples of Melpomene Macbeth is reviewed in this week's "Exhibitionism," p. 60. The production closes Saturday, October 28.
