Web Master“It was the first show that I ever walked out on during intermission, but I went out drinking instead, so it was ok. Even if they had known their lines, and the lights cues had actually been on time, I still wouldn’t have liked it.” This comment, made by a perturbed viewer of last weekend’s production of Vo-Du Macbeth, seems to sum up the general feelings about the show.
People were confused; people were disappointed, recounting middle school performances of a higher quality; people were pissed off that they had wasted their money.
Not the least disappointed was Charlie Robin, the Edison Theater’s Managing Director, who was responsible for bringing the production to WU. “I saw the preliminary work of this production last December when I went down to New Orleans and really liked where the production was going. It is amazing that after nine months and a great deal of hard work how little it has changed.”
Robin was ecstatic about the process as a whole. “Our involvement was right. It really took advantage of the recourses that WU had to offer with the symposium and other discussions surrounding the play and important issues were brought up. It is unfortunate that the production did not match up to the scholastic ability of the school or the standards of the Ovations Series.”
Back in 1936, Vou-Dou Macbeth, a work arranged and staged by Orson Welles, was performed in Harlem. It was set in 19th Century Haiti just after the Great Haitian Slave Revolt and was an immediate success with sold out shows for its entire ten-week run. While the NSP’s Vo-Du Macbeth was inspired by the success of Welles’s show, it is not a recreation of it
All involved knew that the production was a work in progress. Lenwood Sloan, the artistic director of the National Spirit Project and Vo-Du Macbeth, was very excited and passionate about putting into production a work that had until then only been performed as a “formal radio play” with the actors dressed in black, reading from scripts just a couple feet away from their audience.
Of the staging of the play, Sloan explained, “It is like starting again. We are now adding shape, color, texture, complexion, and attitude.” Going into last weekend’s shows, Sloan expressed the excitement of the group and asserted that production was “ready to dance.”
“The problem was,” explained Robin, “Lenny never looked at the production where it was at that moment. He was always concerned with the eventual development. He insinuated that the piece would be much further along than it actually was and I had no idea until Friday’s final rehearsal the level it was at and how little on detail they had worked. They were at a very basic level in their production.” Furthermore, the company took advantage of the Edison Theater’s generosity, taking a full week of residency to essentially play around with production elements. “They were suppose to bring things, certain production elements, that we never saw,” said Robin.
The NSP is in the midst of a five-year-long process that will eventually result in what they hope to be a full-fledge international sensation. For the last two years, the company was in stage one, devoted to research and logistics. During this year and next, they are going through a test phase to see how the play performs to real audiences. Having left here, the group has returned to the South to review a video of the production “the same way a football coach studies a play-by-play.”
Vo-Du Macbeth was an ambitious opening to the Edison’s Ovation series. Sloan admits that it is rare for a season to begin with an unfinished piece but he is proud of the Edison for stepping up and taking the risk. He spoke endearingly of Robin, Edison’s Managing Director: “Charlie Robin is one of maybe ten or fifteen true curators of performing art in the country. Like a curator of a museum, he has an eye for aesthetic and makes a real statement with positioning of pieces.”
Robin agrees: “The Edison [being part of a University setting] is able to take more risks,” but even so, he is a little shaken by what such an unflattering opening might mean for the Edison. “We have a commitment to work with new artists and I am hoping that our patrons will not become gun-shy to new shows.”