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William Shakespeare
MACBETH
Thomas Thieringer interviews stage director Calixto Bieito
The last of Shakespeare's great tragedies tells the story of the rise and fall of the panic-stricken murderous dictator Macbeth: on the one hand it is Shakespeare's most constricting and oppressive play, the unpleasantly intimate human study of terror and paranoia, of the power of imagination and mistrust, and on the other it is Shakespeare's most radical world sketch of an all shattering ambiguity: "Fair is foul and foul is fair". But what happens when absolutely nothing is sure any more, when people no longer know each other, not even themselves?
Mr. Bieito, you are staging as your first production in Salzburg William Shakespeare's Macbeth - an old story from Scotland about people who go over dead bodies to gain power. What is important about this for you as the stage director?
Calixto Bieito: Macbeth is one of the most depraved figures in theatre literature. There is a film by John McNaughton, Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. When I saw this film I thought, "Oh my god, how horrible. In Macbeth the question for me is how to show a bestial murderer, who is nevertheless in all his contradictoriness a lonely person. That is what I'd like to explore in this play.
How do you set about presenting a conclusive interpretation of Macbeth?
Calixto Bieito: Macbeth is more than simply an interesting play.
It can be compared to a bullfight. Theatre must always present extreme
emotions, as I tried to do, for instance, in my staging of Così
fan tutte at the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff or with
Valle-Inclán's Barbaric Comedies at the Edinburgh Festival. Sexual
energy is the driving force.
That is where I see the relationship to a bullfight: theatre has to be
dangerous. Dangerous above all in the emotions. I intend to show Macbeth
in a dangerous way.
Do you not find it difficult to stage in a foreign language?
Calixto Bieito: I love to meet people and work with very different actors. It is wonderful to stage a play like Macbeth in such international surroundings. That is good for the actors and good for me. There will be a special network of relations between the director and the actors. When you work in a foreign language you have to be absolutely open so as to understand the opinions and feelings of everyone. This is a great challenge for me. I now speak Italian, French, English, Catalan, Spanish and I'm just trying to learn some German.
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| Calixto Bieito, Regisseur von Shakespeares “Macbeth” auf der Halleiner Pernerinsel. |
Do you come to the rehearsals with a specific staging concept?
Calixto Bieito: No, I'm always changing things, again and again. I listen and react carefully to the intentions and wishes of the actors. But right from the beginning I have a perfectly clear idea of what I want to tell the audience.
And what does that mean in Macbeth?
Calixto Bieito: When I staged Carmen I saw the essential basic mood as limitation. Now with Macbeth it is depravity. The 20th century is certainly the most cruel in the history of mankind. There were so many people who were killers. My way of approaching Macbeth is with the image in mind of people killing people - be it in Kosovo, in former Yugoslavia, Ireland, or in the Basque Country.
Is that interesting when it is known right from the beginning that the two Macbeths are beasts?
Calixto Bieito: In the film Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer, first of all a normal man is seen, then he is revealed as a monster. That is how I would like to show it in Macbeth: outwardly an ordinary, normal married couple - and then we discover that the two know no human limits, that they are animals who eat shit - as in Pasolini's film Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom. And these monsters finish up in extreme solitude. I want the audience to take this journey and along the way they constantly have to be irritated so that they are perpetually forced to change their mind about these people and their actions. It is intended to be a strongly realistic story. I am interested in the prejudices people have about Macbeth. In Spain and in England it is said that you are cursed if you stage Macbeth; a further point is that the play has allegedly been handed down in a very incomplete form. These are reservations probably based on the fact that everyone suspects that anyone could be Macbeth. That becomes understandable simply by reading the newspapers - every day you can read something about domestic violence. Everyday somewhere in the world a husband kills his wife - these are all terrible, helpless killers even if they are not called MilosŠevi ´c. This is what we have to portray in Macbeth. At the end the two are, surprisingly enough, human beings again.
You are repeatedly interested in pieces through which you can show what effect political and moral pressure has on people and how they resist it. Were you consciously aware of the Franco regime?
Calixto Bieito: People try to forget quickly - it is only 25 years since the Franco regime came to an end. I can still remember that political pressure very precisely. My production of A Masked Ball in Barcelona was orientated towards the years after Franco's death. In that production there was a scene in which soldiers kill a young boy. I used the scene to show the particular energy in that mood of uncertainty. For me it is important to discuss phenomena such as Fascism on the stage. But so far no one has done this in Spain. The fact that I tried to do that with A Masked Ball was seen as a provocation. When I did the Barbaric Comedies, I tried to present Valle-Inclán's ideas on the stage but the rape scene he described caused a scandal. This can happen.
Do we still need theatre?
Calixto Bieito: I at least still need it, because it is only when I am rehearsing in the theatre that I experience feelings of freedom, passion and energy in their strongest form. And when the production is good and the performance is good then the public has the same kind of feelings. I once went to a bullfight: afterwards I had to go for a walk for two hours. I was so agitated, so disturbed, so happy, so breathless, in such a turmoil. That is what theatre must be like.
Interview: Thomas Thieringer
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
Tragedy in five acts
German translation by
Frank Günther
Stage director Calixto Bieito
Stage design Barbara Ehnes
Costumes Mercé Paloma
Dramaturgy Tilman Raabke
Lighting design Olaf Freese
Duncan Roland Renner
Malcolm Matthias Bundschuh
Donalbain Lorenz Nufer
Macbeth Andreas Grothgar
Lady Macbeth Anne Tismer
Banquo Michael Neuenschwander
Macduff Max Hopp
Lady Macduff Katharina Schubert
Lenox Michael Tregor
Rosse Robert Dölle
Seyton Jeannette Spassova
Perner-Insel, Hallein
Tickets priced from ATS 300 to 1,200 are available for all performances from 31 July from the Ticket Office of the Salzburg Festival (Tel.: 0043 662 8045 579, Fax: 0043 662 8045 760)
New production: 28 July 2001
29 and 31 July, 1, 4, 5 (performance starts at 3 p.m.),
7, 8, 10, 11, 12, (performance starts at 3 p.m.), 14, 15 and 16 August
2001. Performances start at 7 p.m. unless otherwise stated.