Digital @ The Arts Unit Creative Teachers

Macbeth - Drama

NSW Public Schools Drama Company 2019

Years 10 to 12 virtual performance opportunity

Drama resource developed by The Arts Unit

Suggestions for how to use this resource with your students

The following activities include examples of activities you could explore with your drama students.

  • an opportunity for students to view a recorded live performance

  • analysis of role and character through close study of the text

  • discussion of the approaches to acting from the students and their interviews

  • exploration of transformation of Shakespeare into a different context

  • experimentation with Shakespearean language, including insults and word creation

  • discussion of costume, set, sound and lighting within the production

  • exploration of iambic pentameter through script analysis and vocal exercises

  • stimulus to then explore various scenario based exercises with students, through improvisation or prepared

Improvisation warm ups

Explore these improvisation activities with your students.

  1. Classic in a Minute: Try performing the story of 'Macbeth' in one minute

  2. Seduction: Persuade someone to do something they don’t want to do

  3. Shakespeare scene: Perform a scene in the style of Shakespeare eg at the hairdressers, at the COVD clinic, bushwalking, job interview, at K-Mart, etc.

  4. Genre replay: Play a neutral scene and then replay the scene in the style of the character Macbeth, then the witches, then Lady Macbeth.

  5. In The Style Of: retell 'Macbeth' in the style of another genre eg Sci Fi, Indiana Jones, Western, Kung Fu, Documentary, etc.

Introductory prediction activity

Before students watch the 'Macbeth' production complete this activity to introduce the play to students through evidence gathering and using their imagination to predict what the play is about.

Activity – Evidence Tags

Create evidence tags with the following images from the production – A crown, a dagger, bloody hands, midnight, ambition stairs, boy with gun and butterfly wings.

Divide students into small groups and give an evidence tag to each group.

Students are now detectives discovering details of the story and are given the opportunity to discuss their evidence tag.

Encourage students to discuss:

  • whether this evidence (eg. a crown) exists in the world of the play then what else could exist?

  • the physical environment where this evidence could exist

  • the people, their role in society associated with the evidence

  • their feelings towards the evidence

  • what keys events could happen involving the object

Students are given 5 minutes in groups to discuss ideas

Students share their findings stating: ‘Our evidence was… and we saw…

As a class identify what kind of place or space would all of these events have occurred in and what they predict the play Macbeth could be about.

crown
dagger
boy's back with blue butterfly wings, holding a rifle
full moon in dark midnight sky
letters of ambition placed on stairs with one one letter on each step
Hands covered in blood held up in front of a woman's face

Scenario exercises

Use scenarios as supporting exercises for students to workshop as an introduction to the play. These scenarios could also be used after watching the play for further development.

Scenarios for students to explore include:

  • regretting actions you have taken that have impacted others

  • plotting someone’s downfall (develop a ritual)

  • prefect convincing the vice captain to challenge the school captain

  • arrive at your colleague’s place to pick up your boss to discover your boss has been murdered

  • out at a dinner party when someone starts hallucinating

  • you think your best friend has done something terrible and you are about to meet up with them. You want to find out the truth without making them suspicious.

Holly Matthews as Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth played by Holly Matthews

Iambic pentameter

Watch the video 'Why Shakespeare loved iambic pentameter' to explore this technique used by William Shakespeare.

Why Shakespeare loved iambic pentameter

Duration: 05:21
Photography by Anna Warr

Task:

  • Lead an exercise of clapping the rhythm using these blank verse syllables:
    "Ti tum ti tum ti tum ti tum ti tum"

  • Using following verse read aloud while also using body percussion to guide students in exploring iambic pentameter:

      • clap it out

      • stomp it out

      • tapping on head / nose / ears.

Macbeth (Act 1, Scene 7)

"Who dares do more is none.
What beast was ’t, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both."

Task:

  • Identifying the iambic pentameter through notation above the script will assist students when working with Shakespeare's plays.

  • Guide students to write dots and dashes (- / - /- /- /) to notate the parts of Shakespeare's script.

An example from 'Romeo and Juliet' (Act 1, Prologue)

- / - / - / - / - /
Two households, both alike in dignity,

- / - / - / - / - /
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene


  • Work together to notate the script from Macbeth (Act 4, Scene 1)

"Round about the cauldron go;
In the poisoned entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Sweltered venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ th’ charmèd pot.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble."

Extension activity

Once you are familiar with the play and its themes and characters, reimagine the story in a contemporary setting using modern language. Try to use the characters but create a new world for them. For example: in a fashion house, outside the Capitol Building, in a mining corporation, in a media conglomerate.

Your scene/play should go for up to 10 minutes and cover the main issues and plot points of 'Macbeth'.

Syllabus outcomes

Drama 7-10 Syllabus outcomes

  • 5.1.1: manipulates the elements of drama to create belief, clarity and tension in character, role, situation and action.

  • 5.1.3: devises, interprets and enacts drama using scripted and unscripted material or text.

  • 5.2.1: applies acting and performance techniques expressively and collaboratively to communicate dramatic meaning.

  • 5.2.2: selects and uses performance spaces, theatre conventions and production elements appropriate to purpose and audience.

  • 5.3.2: analyses the contemporary and historical contexts of drama.

Drama Stage 6 Syllabus outcomes

  • P1.2: explores ideas and situations, expressing them imaginatively in dramatic form

  • P1.4: understands, manages and manipulates theatrical elements and elements of production, using them perceptively and creatively

  • P2.2: understands the contributions to a production of the playwright, director, dramaturg, designers, front-of-house staff, technical staff and producers

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