Bag&Baggage Presents a world-premiere adaptation of 'Macbeth'

• Previews Wed March 9 & Thurs March 10, 7:30-all preview tickets $12
• Opens Fri March 11; runs through Sun March 27; tickets for regular performances $18-$23
• Thurs-Fri-Sat Eves 7:30pm, Sun Matinees 2:00pm
• The Venetian Theatre, 253 E. Main St., Hillsboro, OR 97124
• Buy tickets online: www.bagnbaggage.org, or call the box office 503-345-9590
• Box office hours Mon through Fri, 2:30-4:30pm, and 90 minutes prior to performances. Voicemails will be returned during office hours.
• This production sponsored in part by The Oregon Cultural Trust

Bag&Baggage always does something original with Shakespeare, giving rise to the company's tagline, "See a classic again for the first time." For this new world-premiere adaptation of The Scottish Play, Artistic Director Scott Palmer delves into the same source materials that the Bard used to craft his story, and emerges with a Macbeth that remains true and fatally fascinating, with a bloody new twist.
Jan Powell, founding Artistic Director of the critically lauded Tygres Heart Shakespeare Company, directs, in her first outing with Bag&Baggage. Powell recently completed a stint as Artistic Director of the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, and regards directing this Bag&Baggage production as a bit of a homecoming.
"Scott's highly condensed Macbeth adaptation narrows its lens to focus solely on Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and Banquo—and on the extraordinary power of the Witches," says Powell. "I like to think of this production as espresso Shakespeare; the play is distilled to its essence. I am confident that even people who don't normally like Shakespeare will love this version of it: it's like a flash of lighting—brief, intense, filled with action, and completely understandable.
"Our setting of the play is historical, so people who like their Shakespeare in traditional costume will be satisfied, but we've also been very imaginative in our interpretation of the Witches as shape-shifting forces of nature, so those who like a new take on traditional settings will find much to intrigue and delight them."
Palmer's new adaptation relies on many of Shakespeare's original source materials, including the Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland written by Raphael Holinshed in 1577. In addition, this adaptation incorporates selections from Richard Flecknoe's Love's Dominion, Lady Mary Carey's Maternal Elegies and selections from The Two Noble Kinsman, a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher.
Bag&Baggage's Macbeth provides a unique perspective on the play, querying the concept of free will but also exploring Elizabethan attitudes towards infertility and the question of the Macbeths' children. Says Powell, "The lost child has always been a mystery in this play—who was the child and why is it no longer here? Without attempting to solve that mystery, this adaptation provides a vehicle for delving more deeply into the question, and exploring the enormous grief and passion that is a central motive for the Macbeths' crimes."

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