a Naked Shakes production

by William Shakespeare

directed by Irwin Appel

ABOUT

Directed by Irwin Appel, Professor of Theater, and Director of the UCSB BFA Actor Training Program, Macbeth stars UCSB professors Jeff Mills in the title role, and Michael Morgan as Duncan the king, along with a cast of sixteen talented UCSB students. Macbeth also marks the first time Naked Shakes has performed in the Hatlen Theater.  The Department of Theater and Dance is also excited to pair Macbeth with a contemporary play, Equivocation by Bill Cain, a fictional account of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up British Parliament and King James, and how these events may have led to Shakespeare’s creation of Macbeth.  

Naked Shakes believes in the transformation of the actor and the space, along with the imaginative ability of the audience.  Each play is presented clearly and directly so that the audience inhabits the imaginative world of the play through Shakespeare’s language.  The barren physical theater space is very important to the Naked Shakesconcept; it takes on the identity of whatever locale or particular piece of poetic language is described, and yet always reminds the audience they are in a theater.  When Prospero in The Tempest describes “the great Globe itself,” he is not only referring to the entire Earth, but also the “Globe” Theater – Shakespeare’s theater.  That duality is what Naked Shakes is all about.