Shakespeare and Vaporwave mash together to hit the stage

Ethan Cain, Staff Writer

The Northgate Drama Club’s totally tubular twist to William Shakespeare’s Macbeth unleashed Northgate’s inner 80’s to its audience on Oct 25-28, 2018.

The play was performed at the Northgate’s Little Theater and was an experience that offered Shakespearean language and drama mixed with the fabulous artistic style of the 1980’s. The sixty-person production team had started work on the play in August; constructed their own props, collected clothes for wardrobe, and performed it in October. The outcome was a spectacular show filled with spirit.

“It took everyday for a few weeks to set up lights, props, and such,” said junior Sofia Alefi.

Behind the scenes, Alefi was apart of the lighting crew, responsible for angling the lights and setting them to turn on and off at certain times during the play. They also chose soothing lights that lit up the backdrop.

“The lights and colors gave the play a more positive vibe,” said Alefi.

Not only did the lights give the play’s new theme a welcoming feeling, it added to it’s suspense and drama. Overall, the lights helped make the backdrop come to life. It felt like two worlds were combining.

“It’s a language based play on an alternate universe,” said Drama teacher and Director John Litten.

He explained how and why the play was done with an eighties era style. The costumes, setting, and even the actors’ tones of voice were similar to the era. The only part of Macbeth that remained untouched was the language.

“We did not modernize the language of Macbeth, we contextualized it,” said Litten. “Our student actors made sense of the language by reading it over and over again. It only takes around seven minutes for you to finally start to understand what is being said.”

It was important for production team to keep the language the same in fear of modernizing the entire play. It was made in a way that the actors would visibly perform their lines to help the audience understand the current scene.

In the end, when the curtains drew shut, the play was a radical representation of what would happen when you cross Shakespeare with Vaporwave.

Junior Eva Smith expressed her enjoyment of the play’s “unique twist and it’s sword fighting scenes”.