Marvel at Movement in Macbeth
An Interview with Choreographer Christina McCarthy
Learn about the role of movement and visual storytelling in our distinctive production of Macbeth.
Orlando Shakes: Tell us a little bit about your background and what inspired you to be a choreographer?
Christina McCarthy: My training began in classical ballet and later in musical theater. I identified as a dancer as a very young person, but was intrigued by the choreographer’s job, especially for musical theater. I choreographed my first musical as a sophomore in high school for a local junior high. Throughout my dance training, I was always interested in the intersection of theater and dance, how movement informs the spoken story being told. In particular, I still know some of the ballet pantomime, a codified sign language that is used in classical story ballets. Those gestures had so much more resonance for me than the pirouettes and technique of classical ballet. These gestures were a distilling of movement to efficient, emotional expression, often utilized in heightened moments of danger, love, or sorrow. I loved that they were movement and story in one.
Rehearsal photo by Lexie Hoag features the cast of Macbeth lifting actor Lucy Lavely.
Orlando Shakes: What elements of Macbeth are interesting to you as a choreographer?
Christina: In Macbeth there is so much emotional energy that thrusts the characters into decisions. Their actions are surrounded by a miasma of intent, hunger for power, fear and suspicion. I love thinking about how to embody and support this obvious presence of something roiling within the characters, by creating movement in the bodies of the chorus surrounding the actors speaking in the scene. For example, how can we project the internal tension for Macbeth when he considers killing Duncan using the bodies of the performers? Macbeth speaks about a dagger as if it is there and not there. There is an acknowledgment in this moment about how the questions of the mind can float outside our bodies – in this case, in the form of a spectral dagger. These images that are in the text directly are interesting to create movement images for, but, more interesting to me is the treasure hunt of reading between the lines for emotions that can be teased out of the text and manifested in real physical space on stage. I ask often, how do I stage the feeling of a mood, or the energy of an emotion in a metaphorical way that supports the intensity of the language without taking the viewer away from the intricate specificity of Shakespeare’s words. And, obviously who would not want to create movement for magical happenings, witches and ghosts!
Orlando Shakes: If someone didn’t know anything about Noh, how would you describe it to them?
Christina: I know very little about Noh, but am aware that there is a very focused technical movement practice that informs the reading of emotion in the body and the reading of emotion on the static face of a perfectly crafted mask to tell a story in a stylized way. I have had very little exposure to this performance style, but am fascinated by the little I know about its tight clean specificity. It is possible that some elements of this amazing form have inadvertently found their way into my practice of creation in the kind of work I do with director Irwin Appel on our Shakespeare plays.
Rehearsal photo by Lexie Hoag features the cast of Macbeth directed by Choreographer Christina McCarthy.
Orlando Shakes: What was it about Macbeth that suits incorporating Noh into this production? How do you start to choreograph Shakespeare, especially this production?
Christina: Shakespeare’s language is so amazing. One really wants the audience to get the full power of image created in the words. This is primary. So I seek to find very simple, visceral support movement for moments throughout the play. In our work, Irwin and I flow back and forth between realistic staging of a scene and more stylized dance moments. How do we make a table instantly appear and disappear? How do we bring horses into the space of the stage? How can we create movement that makes ghosts seem to materialize when an actor cannot actually do that? All this is secondary to the language. The key to the work is in those nuanced words. We experiment with images to see what supports by just trying it out. Can the language and the movement live in the space at the same time? What needs underlining in the text? What helps the audience to feel what is happening?
Orlando Shakes: How do you prepare the actors for the choreography? What is your choreographic process? Is there a difference process with dancers vs non-dancers?
Christina: I really enjoy uncovering how the actors use their bodies to express. I try to give a rough atmospheric scaffold of the image in my mind, then see what they find and hone the work from there. Trained dancers work from the outside in. We offer specific steps to the dancers that fill out the choreography. They hone the sequence and specific gestural language, then start to uncover the meaning and emotion as they perfect the movement sequences. Actors seem to like to work the other way, from the inside out, perfecting the internal emotional space then letting it flow into their bodies. Actors need more help with how those inner visions manifest in their bodies, so I offer some specific dance style corrections (let your hand try to escape from your wrists as if they are wild birds – not anything that would be part of the text of the play, but gets and a physical performance that is what I am seeing in my head to support something emotional the actor is working on). These kind of random performance notes, bring in unexpected and rich layering of intent that adds to the emotional work the actors are so good at.
Orlando Shakes: How do you communicate your vision with the director and production team?
Christina: When starting out, I show the director a very rough sketch of an emotional/physical arc to see if there is something interesting to develop as I work in collaboration with them. The best way to describe movement is in movement. I find drawings or speaking about images, never gets at what the image does to our viscera. You have to see it. The director has to see it to decide if it belongs in the play.
Orlando Shakes: What are the most important elements of storytelling for you in theater and movement?
Christina: The most important elements of storytelling in theater are – all of them! A harmonic vision of set, lighting, costume, embodied performance and vocal acting of the text must be experienced in a blended way that erases all boundaries between the disciplines. An audience member should leave the play and never comment on the direction, choreography, or design elements individually as wonderful, because if the audience notices these things separately enough to remark on their effectiveness as one piece of the puzzle, we have failed to create transcendent theater that is fully immersive.
Orlando Shakes: Do you have a pre-performance ritual?
Christina: Back when I was a performing dancer, I did a long personal warm-up of my body in preparation for performing in the hour before curtain. The most vital part of this warm-up was the comprehensive preparing of my balance muscles in my ankles so I could be grounded and ready for anything new and unexpected that might derail my dancing.
Orlando Shakes: What have you learned about yourself in your career in the arts so far?
Christina: I love all art forms. In addition to my work as a dancer, choreographer for theater, aerial dance, and floor based dancing, I design and create puppets, ceramics, jewelry, and sculpture. I am fascinated by movement of all kinds. Making a puppet have wings that can fly and fold, finding the static form of a ceramic vessel that seems to be in motion, how sound and movement can give jewelry an enticing allure – all these things feel like they come from the same motivational place in me to create. We need so much of what art has to offer, a glimpse of the divine, a glimpse of the horror and sadness. These things make us better humans, more compassionate. We feel. We cry, and hopefully, we act better in our day-to-day life.
Orlando Shakes: What are you most excited for the audience to see?
Christina: I am excited to share this way of seeing Shakespeare with a focus on the exquisite language and the support of movement to keep the magic flowing before the audience’s eyes and to keep their hearts racing.
Orlando Shakes: What do you suggest for new choreographers or dancers interested in pursuing choreography?
Christina: If you are an artist of any kind. Make the work. See it outside your body. Rework it. See it again and keep making new work. Be fearless. We only learn to make art, by making it. It is not art if it only resides in our heads. In our heads, it is only a dream.
About Christina McCarthy
Christina McCarthy is a multi-media artist and Vice Chair of Theater and Dance at UC Santa Barbara. Her choreography spans classical musical theater, movement work for plays and circus aerial dance along with her focus in concert contemporary dance. She is a puppet inventor and creator and often uses puppet and object manipulation in her theater/dance pieces. She has collaborated with Irwin Appel on Shakespeare plays as a movement and image deviser for the last five years. As Vice Chair, she oversees the Dance Program and teaches choreography, dance on film, contemporary dance technique and puppet construction. This is Christina’s first time working with Orlando Shakes and she is thrilled to be working with this dynamic company.