Broadway World Press

Mixed media Ensemble Presents TheBcam/MacBeth 9/8-26

by BWW News Desk Aug. 17, 2010     

"TheBcam/MacBeth," a mixed media deconstruction of the classic Shakespeare story of evil, receives its world premiere in a three-week engagement produced by Inertia Productions. Directed by Kevin Kittle ("In God's Hat"), and written by William Shakespeare, with additional material by the ensemble and Don Nigro, "TheBcam/MacBeth" plays from Wednesday September 8 through Sunday September 26, at the Flamboyan Theater at Clemente Soto Veléz Cultural and Educational Center, 107 Suffolk Street on the Lower East Side. The show opens Off-Off Broadway on Sunday September 12 at 2pm. Tickets are $18 and available via Tix.com, either by phone at (800) 595-4TIX (4849), or online at www.tix.com

Combining live action with a mixture of live-feed and filmed projections, "TheBcam/MacBeth" does in fact cleave to Shakespeare's story and text, to which it adds and incorporates new material developed by the ensemble. The resulting hybrid, though highly imagistic and movement-focused, is not meant as a reinvention of or departure from the Shakespeare as it is a deep exploration of its themes of evil and a fall from grace using modern theatrical and textual instruments to perform the probe. As Kittle, the director, explains it, "TheBcam/MacBeth" "broadens the landscape and shows the repercussions and responses to the primary and primal acts of evil." Like the so-called b-cam in film, which picks up secondary shots not the main coverage, Kittle looks for evil's ripple effects on a particularly broad, modern canvas.

Best-known for his gritty, naturalistic work (his direction of the critics darling "In God's Hat," which just concluded a limited run on Theater Row, received high marks), Kittle is also the director of performance ensemble at Rutgers University, where he is an assistant professor of acting. Danielle Liccardo, Inertia's artistic director, is a professor of movement in the department. Many of the ensemble members are former students and current colleagues of the pair. "TheBcam/MacBeth" marks the return of Inertia Productions after a seven-year hiatus.

Numbering 14, the ensemble includes Lawrence Ballard, David Delaney, Doug Durlacher, Eric Jennings, Ean Miles Kessler, Danielle Liccardo (as Lady Macbeth), Theo Macabeo, Michele Salter, Charlie Sandlan (Macbeth), Susan Schuld, Alexis Slade, Teale Sperling, Robert Walsh, and Carrie Watt.

The production's creative design team includes Jared Mezzocchi (director of media performance design), Theo Macabeo (media design), Doug Durlacher (set design), Liam Billingham (lighting design), Nicholas Nelson (sound design), and Frank Chavez & Kim Matela (costume consultants). The production stage manager is Nicole Rizzo. The assistant stage managers are Anastasia Rutkowski and Alec MacPherson.