The Magic Spell
Reflecting on my 2017 play, Lady Macbeth and Her Pal, Megan.
I’m teaching Macbeth this summer at Hollins Playwrights Lab — along with, coincidentally, every other member of the faculty, in a spectacular example of The Vibes Are Strong — and rather than purchase a new copy, I decided to dig out my old one. Why buy a new one? Shakespeare doesn’t need the money.
My old copy is not kept on the bookshelf. I keep it stored away in a big red suitcase with all the other props from my show, Lady Macbeth and Her Pal, Megan. I hadn’t opened this suitcase in four years. Opening it this morning was a deeply pleasurable experience.
First, the suitcase itself: candy-apple red, shiny, a hardcase model from eBags (best suitcases on the market, in my view), designed to endure the indignities of international travel. It was dusty on the outside, but the smooth steel zippers glided open like it was new. And inside: so tidy! The Container Store wishes. The Home Edit could never. The set is a 16-inch actor’s cube designed to disassemble and pack flat into a cardboard box. All the other props — the flashlight, the Sassy Magazine, the rubber chicken, the beer bottle, the book — were snugly tucked away into this zippered packing cube I had bought special. The cardboard box lay in the bottom of the suitcase, the packing cube nestled alongside it. And in the lid, the best part of all: the trick sweatshirt that transforms dazzlingly into a floor-length, gold trimmed hooded cape.
I’ll probably never do the show again, but I can’t bear to unpack the suitcase. I packed and repacked that thing so many times. I felt like a vaudevillian. It was truly a solo show: only four light cues, the whole set inside my bag. I don’t know how many times I did it. Fifty? Sixty?
I don’t want to do the show again, for the record. I’m done with that show. Now it lives on in published script form for other people to do, and I love that. My collaborator Saffron says I write a show to transform my life; my play launches me into the next chapter. If that’s the case, then Lady Macbeth and Her Pal, Megan was two chapters ago. But still, it felt strange to remove the script from the suitcase. I have a nagging feeling that the suitcase is incomplete now. It’s missing a key prop!
I have special fondness for Lady M. It’s a comedy about a tragedy: the sidelining of Lady Macbeth. It looks at women’s ambition; how the game is rigged; how the only way to win a rigged game is to not play, but to play your own game; it’s full of magic and witchcraft. When I performed that show, I was a priestess. The play was my incantation. But the magic was hidden up my sleeve, disguised by my aw-shucks comedy. You thought it was a sweatshirt. And then all was revealed.
It transformed me.
I’m no longer afraid of saying “Macbeth” in a theatre. I’m not afraid of darkness. I’m not afraid of witches. I’m one of them.
I want more magic. More covens. Fewer kings. More laughter building to ecstasy. That’s my prayer for today.
