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Please note, this performance has been postponed until later in the year.
Sophie Fiennes’ immersive film offers privileged access to the experience of making theatre with pioneering practitioners, Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod of Cheek By Jowl.
In a derelict Gothic mansion on the outskirts of London, we join eight actors – four Macbeths and four Lady Macbeths – for eleven days with Cheek By Jowl. Working in pairs, they investigate key scenes and soliloquies from Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy.
But this film is not about the play. It’s about being offered a different position from which to view acting and theatre – of seeing text newly animated in ways more subtle, surprising, revelatory and various than even the most dedicated theatre-goers might have considered possible. Within the labyrinthine remains of the building, we watch with increasing fascination as actors and spaces combine to give Shakespeare’s words seemingly infinite new lives. Shot by Sophie Fiennes, who operates as a single shooter from inside the ensemble, its narrative construction flows along the narrative lines of the play. Throughout, Donnellan’s interactions with the actors serve simultaneously as a guide for the film’s audience, using humour, insight, and challenge to open our eyes to fresh possibilities.