Macbeth: nach Shakespeare

Reading and reception at Mountain View Cemetery Aug. 6

Macbeth: After Shakespeare
By Heiner Müller | Translated by Carl Weber | Directed by Quinn Harris

Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009

Celebration Hall, Mountainview Cemetery, 39th Ave., Vancouver

Reception: 6:30 pm. Reading: 7:30pm

Admission: Free

Park along Fraser St. @ 39th or on 41st Ave near Fraser and follow the signs through Mountain View Cemetery.

Raise a glass with the Bard’s murderous couple and Dunsinane’s dead as the sun goes down over one of Vancouver’s great new cultural spaces — Celebration Hall at Mountain View Cemetery. Theatre Conspiracy and GasHeart Theatre dig up a performance of Heiner Müller’s adaptation, Macbeth: After Shakespeare. 

One of Europe’s most highly acclaimed 20th-century dramatists, the late Heiner Müller is best known in the English speaking world for the play Hamletmachine. Now Conspiracy and GasHeart have commissioned Müller’s former colleague, Stanford University professor Carl Weber, to translate Müller’s Macbeth into English for the first time. Darker and more blood spattered, but also funnier than the Bard’s original, nobody comes out of it looking good.

The evening’s performance is lead by Michael Scholar Jr (Macbeth) and Anna Cummer (Lady M) and is directed by Theatre Conspiracy artistic associate and GasHeart Theatre artistic producer, Quinn Harris.

Now in its 13th season, Theatre Conspiracy brought Live From a Bush of Ghosts and Club PuSh to the 2009 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, and took home three Jessie Awards for its co-production (with Rumble Productions) of Blackbird by David Harrower at the Cultch this year. Development support for Macbeth: nach Shakespeare is the latest initiative in Theatre Conspiracy’s Envoys Series to investigate world drama in translation.

GasHeart Theatre was co-founded by James Foy and Quinn Harris, who are currently in residence with Conspiracy, funded by the City of Vancouver. The company’s inaugural production, The Mechanical Bride, premiered at the 2008 Victoria and Vancouver Fringe Festivals. GasHeart Theatre will return to the Vancouver Fringe this year with a new adaptation of the Dada classic, The Gas Heart.   www.gasheart.ca

Share a toast with the dead and witness a little piece of theatre history with the first look at this remarkable German take on the Scottish Play.

“Murder has set the table, treason salted the meat” – Heiner Müller, Macbeth: nach Shakespeare

Interested in volunteering for this event? Please email James Foy: foy@conspiracy.ca.

MEDIA CONTACT: Tim Carlson 604.878.8668, info@conspiracy.ca

Photo credit: Sharon Bradley