The Scottish Play is back on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre, featuring Daniel Craig, last seen on Broadway as Iago in 2017's Othello, and Ruth Negga, making her Broadway debut. Directed by Tony Award-winner Sam Gold, Macbeth runs until July 10. Gold has said of this production, "It's a very visceral play. Lots of food, lots of viscera" including some actual home cooking; the witches use their cauldron to make a pot of lentil stew over the course of the performance.
Christine Jones is no stranger to Broadway having worked as scenic designer on multiple shows including Spring Awakening and American Idiot, the musical based on Green Day's album of the same name, for which she won a Tony Award. She is also the recipient of an Olivier Award for Best Set Design for Harry Potter And The Cursed Child in London's West End, is well known for her work designing opera, and is the artistic director of Theatre For One, an intimate performance space for new and unique works. Live Design talked to Jones about her work designing Macbeth.
Live Design: What attracted you to this project?
Christine Jones: The idea of working with Sam Gold attracted me to this project. It is our first project together and I found it moving to be in the room with him. Additionally, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and our communities' increased commitment to inclusion and diversity in theatre-making, I have felt newly curious about working with Shakespeare's writing through our contemporary lens.
LD: Does your approach to a design vary based on whether it is a new play/musical versus a new production of an established play? Are you conscious of having to create a new world when this play has had so many famous iterations in the past?
CJ: I never think about past productions or research them. A production is alive to the moment it is in, and who the people are who are making it, in this moment of time. Even if I had designed the play before, which I have, it feels brand new, because I am in a different place in my life, with a different group of people. I approach all productions from the present, with these people now, no matter whether it is a play or a musical.
LD: When you have a sense of where the production is headed, do you have favorite places to go for research/inspiration?
CJ: The text is where my research begins. I do a lot of work with the text, creating distillations that I use to tune the instrument of my instincts before I start doing research. In this case I was also inspired by Sam's impulse to think of us all as witches, theatre witches, using stagecraft to tell this story. Once tuned and armed with intention, I peruse my library of books for the images that resonate with me, and I create massive collages as a way of connecting the images to the arc of the event. I also love going to the smaller art-book stores so that I can look through every book in the store.
LD: For this production, did you work out specific themes with the director or did you have free rein? What was your main inspiration here?
CJ: The main inspiration, as I mentioned above, was Sam's idea that we are all witches. He also brought in work by the artist Judy Chicago that she made using fog guns. In addition, Sam had a clear idea about wanting to take care of the cast performing this brutal tragedy of extreme violence. Sam talks about theatre as a place for trauma processing. This reminded me of Rage Rooms, which are spaces in which you pay to break things! These rooms became a main source of inspiration as well. Our intention was to create a space for witches, making theatre magic, in and out of the fog, within a container that could allow emotions to be expressed in full force and then catch the performers at the end and nourish them as they complete their performance ritual. The witches make a stew that is started at the beginning of the play and is ready to serve by the end. Sam often makes the broth for the stew at home. He is a remarkable cook, as well as a remarkable human, and I think all of this comes through in the production.
LD: Can you talk us through some of your favorite parts of the design for this production?
CJ: Hmmmm—I love the way light and fog interact with the steam of the lentil stew, and the deep purple paint that responds unexpectedly to washes of colored light. I love that the focus of the space is on the performers and not on the physical production, that the design is an envelope, a vessel, a cauldron of its own for these people- actors and audiences, to co-create spells each night.
LD: Was there a design which evolved in a new direction once rehearsals started or was your design flexible enough to accommodate the choreography of a piece?
CJ: A raw space like this one, which is essentially an empty stage, or a rehearsal space, is by nature a flexible space. You can make anything happen in an Empty Space. That is the contract we make as theatre animals.
I love the energy and the intimacy found in a rehearsal room and the way that the staging feels spontaneous and mutable there. Sam stays awake to his impulses throughout the process. Even when we lost numerous cast members to Covid, he kept asking us to ask each other, does this feel like our world? When it did not, we evolved. Pete Sarafin is our props master. Shout out to Pete! This is his last Broadway show, and he was muscularly supportive of our exploration- one day buying supplies to make eye of newt, another day buying an immersion blender, and yet another getting more beer, or more blood, or co-opting his fiance to make (gorgeous) flower arrangements. He's leaving the theatre to open a shop in Colorado called Wit's End. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between whether we were making a play, or throwing an elaborate witchy ragey dinner party, but Pete rolled all the way with us, and we can't do what we do without the incredible skill and perseverance of people like Pete and all our craftspeople and the stage managers! (Second shout out to SMs!)
Macbeth Creative Team
- Director: Sam Gold
- Scenic Designer: Christine Jones
- Scenic Design: Christine Jones
- Scenic Associate: Mary Hamrick
- Scenic Assistants: Maureen Freedman, Matthew Buttrey, Frank McCullough
- Model: Matthew Buttrey, Maureen Freedman
- Costume Designer: Suttirat Larlarb
- Lighting Designer: Jane Cox
- Sound Designer: Mikaal Sulaiman
- Original Music: Gaelynn Lea
- Special Effects: Jeremy Chernick
- Fight Director: David Leong
- Text Consultants: Michael Sexton, Ayanna Thompson
- Vocal Coach: Dawn-Elin Fraser
- Production Stage Manager: Kevin Bertolacci