To Trade & Traffic in Affairs of Breath-shared air in Macbeth
Presentation
Overview
Overview
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SAA Workshop – Denver ‘26 To Trade & Traffic in Affairs of Breath – shared air in Macbeth Wwwwhhhhen shall we three meet again? From its opening moment, air & breath permeate the world of Macbeth…
Performed as live theatre, to trade and traffic in pneumatic embodiment constitutes a central element of actors’ interpretive work. As Michael York & Adrian Brine impart, in A Shakespearean Actor Prepares: “to learn to breathe in unison with a character is to know that character physically.”[1] Actor Liev Schreiber (when playing Macbeth in Central Park) homed-in on the interrelatedness of breath & dramatic action within Macbeth’s soliloquy: “If it were done when ‘tis done then ‘twere well / It were done quickly…” spotlighting the breathlessness of Macbeth by speech’s end, when his inflation by Lady Macbeth is tactically penned: As Schreiber puts it in a TV interview: To do those lines, you need incredible breath. And when you run out of breath [vocalizes strained extended exhalation] it puts you in that place which makes you almost cry… and that’s where she finds him. And Shakespeare does that to you physically. He makes you run out of air. And then she comes in.[2] The soliloquy itself gallops apace (like Juliet’s fiery-footed steeds), with Macbeth invoking “heaven’s cherubim, horsed / upon the sightless couriers of the air” breathlessly seeking to harness his “vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself / And falls on the other” side— he runs out of air mid-line, as Lady Macbeth enters & literally in-spires him: to commit regicide.
In Act 2 scene 2, having murdered Duncan, the couple’s interwoven stichomythic half-lines (as renowned RSC voice & speech coach Cicely Berry has noted) reveal a connection so close that they are “breathing together.”[3]
In our workshop, via dramaturgical engagement & embodiment this wide-ranging characters within the play’s ecosystem we shall explore:
