On Thursday, March 13th, 2025, The Rustic Mechanicals performed a Shakespearian classic, The Tragedy of Macbeth, at Elkins High School as a private performance. Students had the opportunity to get out of class, watch them perform the show, and get educated on Shakespeare’s work and theater in general. After the show, students had a chance to ask the actors questions about the show or theater, as well as the opportunity to check out props or other things used backstage during the show, making it a great learning experience.
“I absolutely loved the show and the experience that they created with the music and how they interacted with the audience instead of just ignoring that there are people watching them. They broke the fourth wall a lot, and I absolutely love that. Most of all, I just loved watching something and learning something with my friends, and that’s the opportunity that that show gave me”, Eva Gainer says.
The Rustic Mechanics make it a point to make the experience fun and unique. In this show, they attempted to work with what they consider Shakespeare’s conditions, using the bare minimum for a set, as well as using different objects to create sound effects for the show, giving this production a creative twist. In the performance not only did they just use the set, but the seating as well. Seats were on stage, and the audience was close to the actors, making the show immersive to the view.
“What an awesome challenge we have in carrying the torch (so to speak!) of doing Macbeth using Shakespeare’s Staging Conditions to gross-out, freak-out, surprise, delight, and scare our audiences without light boards, sound boards, or electric fog machines. We will create a live, acoustic soundtrack: creepy sounds/voices that will help an audience imagine the heath, the castles, the backdrop for the battles in ways that Shakespeare’s company did for the play’s first audiences… and underneath it all has to be love! If our production is not filled with big love, the story, the tragedy, doesn’t work. I am completely bored by and intolerant of theatre, TV, film where I don’t care about characters.” Jim Warren, the director, says in the press release.
With the set being the bare minimum, this meant the show mostly relied on the actors. The emotions and feelings conveyed throughout the show relied on the actors to make them apparent to the audience. Shakespeare’s work, written in early modern English, isn’t always the easiest to understand, but the way the actors conveyed the story through emotion and character made the story comprehensible.
“I learned the intense emotion that can be transformed through text interpretation and good acting, even without ornate props,” Ava Hymes says.
Even though the use of tech was minimal, they still used tech to convey important parts of the story. A fine example of this is the blood used throughout the play. There were two different kinds made, edible and non-edible. The use of blood within the show, as well as many other props used, brought the show to life, and it wouldn’t have been the same without it.
“I liked their minimalistic use of props and set pieces. Even with such a lack of items, they still did well conveying a scene,” Zahra Loutfi says.
