What, tell me you want speak true . You look like a flower. Is this a dagger which i see before me . The door, uncertainty do not charge. Dagger. Ll be the order king all. Orders from the province. Charlie i am pleased to have back hereh brennagh this table. Have you been waiting to do this . Kenneth i have been circling it. It is the copy i first came across on our Kitchen Table and i was about 10 or 11 years old, my brother was five years older atn me, and he was doing it school. I saw the three wyrd sisters on the cover. This is the same copy i have with me every night, on my dressing room table. 40 years of this. Charlie is it unique to do it at this time in your life . Kenneth i think i had a great old acting School Mentor who used to run the academy of dramatic art. He said you have got to wait until you are the right age, whatever that is. 40s,d you might 30s and you are too young. I did not understand it. I revered him. Somehow it came together through virtue, through meeting rob ashfield, my brilliant codirector and finding the right , the actress to be leading macbeth. The elements started to pull together. Charlie you had a 10 year absence from shakespeare. Kenneth i had, and like many things in my career, others may look at it differently. Hese accidents happen my wife talks about it. She says people say to me, does he read shakespeare by the bedside . You tell them . She said, yes, you do, because you always are. Years away from doing it, but quite a lot of time just reading or being exposed. It is always in my life. Charlie what is this different . Kenneth i suppose every time a group of particular people do it , there is a certain elemental part of the peace, so maybe the first thing we do is to take a speech at the beginning of the play, spoken by a character called the bloody sergeant, which is the description of a battle in which macbeth is extremely brave and heroic, fearless in fact. Interesting for a character who will become fearful for the rest of the play. We dared take that away and put what he describes on stage. And we wanted to do that for a couple of reasons. First he said, when you meet macbeth, you know a little of what they really mean of this year listen, savagery. A man who you imagine in first place should not have the problems that he turns out to have later on when focused with another murder. In battle, he seems fearless. What we wanted to chiefly do was introduced to the audience a theatrical energy which was hectic and hurtling, where they can literally be a part of the hectic nature between the circumstances of these two fundamentally, at the beginning of the play, good people who make bad decisions because the play, circumstances of the plot does not give you time to think. Charlie the New York Times loved the play. They captured that very thing, hurtling. From the beginning, you have that kind of energy. They were also interested in what goes in the cardinal sin power, and why and how these two people could do this extraordinary thing. It isinks about in plays, easy to think about it in melodramatic terms, but this man killed a friend of his, who is king, whatever, and he doesnt very swiftly and without others being conscious. So others dismiss it as it is absurd, it happens too quickly. Our production was trying to say perhaps these things only happen quickly without thought. Charlie and about his wife . Kenneth she, i cant describe her as not without ambition but a sickness, too full of the milk of human kindness. There are remarks of her being essentially goodnatured, but once he has had this amazing success, reviews are brilliant as it were that duncan says fantastic, i am going to give , you willplanting you have all sorts of rewards. Charlie a new name. Kenneth a new name even, but i am giving my job to him, instead of my son. And immediately mac beth, certainly with the witches in his pronouncement, a few short moments ago, say, why should he be in the way . Take this step that lays in my way, which i must fall down or else or leap. Or leap, or leap means murder in this context. It is basically a wonderful play for putting people in this unusual, extreme position. Charlie the witches are great. You see the opening with this dont hand kind of thing. You see the opening with this stonehenge kind of thing. The lives of the good and the great, the power of suggestion. Some would say it is a silly play because it is about a man who believes his risk up. There his horoscope. Charlie women of power believe in myth as well. Kenneth and also, a place in history and this idea of what the legacy is. Macbeth and lady macbeth appear to not have children, so immortality is not guaranteed by family. So now immortality can perhaps be seized by having a name in the history books. Charlie the relationship between the two, is she more met ambitious than he is . Kenneth i think she is equally ambitious. One of the things we tried to bring in with this savagery, she says goodbye and he goes off to battle, the idea of whether he comes home or not is really very heavily questioned. When they do come back, we do present, we wanted to present this functioning relationship. They scare the pants off of each other. Very passionate. Charlie the passion comes out. Kenneth ian mckellen would argue there are no successful marriages in shakespeare except to the mcbeths, which they both die and they both kill a king along the way. Conversationht the that was essential to the show, to the performance is that he adores her. She is a natural companion for him, and i think that you know, the breakup charlie is she stronger or weaker . Kenneth i cant they both at different times invoke the dark world. She is the first one to say right, i am inviting evil into the room. We are in a world where we believe in it. You audience have just enough because they were hanging around the stones and they were scary, inviting them in. She has to do it in the first time in an first time out. He, the balance of pulitzer of power switches. And then with this mailfemale point of view, he says lets not do it tonight, she says you have got to seize the opportunity. Then he becomes president and says leave everything alone, but he will swear off charlie and the prophecy from the witches. What they said, therefore he went off killing anybody. Kenneth he spends elite trying to swear the circle. Essentially trying to swear the circle. Instead of being the father of kings, he tries to build both him and his son. His determination to leave no stone unturned means he wont ever sleep again. And there is no satisfaction. And the first moment we see him asking, he is with her, and they celebrate. The production house walks on at the coronation. Is nothing. Be thus to be safely thus. I am here, i got a crown, and is nothing. Charlie safely. Kenneth to be safely, and then he splurges in paranoia. Charlie you thought about doing it in the 20th way in the future, a very futuristic kind. What drew you away from that to where you are . Kenneth this difficult thing of when you come up with a sort of, what you might call a sort of concept for the world of the play, and all of these plays are very elastic so they can adapt. Shakespeare can survive anything we struck him up with. But many times, the idea has to do with productive quality. You set thet, merchant of venice in the new york stock exchange, and you get a resonance with the world of ,oney, but is also about love whether the girl is going to choose the boy or whatever it might be. Mcbeth felt asic though it potentially denied the savagery and primitive nature of some of these. And malcolm later on says we will make those who helped me , the first that scotland ever has. You sense the journey from primitive to more sensible where people in power will give you an honor. Charlie it is fascinating about shakespeare. First of all, i think i read v, who became james i of england, would come to shakespeare plays. Kenneth he was obsessed with the subject. Charlie the story of macbeth, they think he got from the chronicles . Kenneth yes, sure. Shakespeare was fantastically comprehensive in where he went for all of his stories. And also, he knew how to borrow, and he knew how to be inspired. I, therecently, alex and radiant. The partspeech about she sat on like a burnished throne. Charlie there is a comparison between the two. Kenneth the essential focus on the relationship between to come located people, a powerful man with a brilliant woman, and they have a balancing impact. But the bard speech in thomas norths lives of the ancient romans, etc. , shakespeare coulters fairly come intensively. He scattered his gatherings, but charlie every writer steals a great deal. Kenneth yeah, yeah. Charlie the results of this in terms of, when you, there are these soliloquies you have with lines, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, did you approach those differently . That you wanted to, in your own rendition not to be different from anyone else who had been macbeth, but some sense of how you wanted to take these different moments . And deliver them . Kenneth it is a question, for instance with tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, it grew organically out of this idea that aside from the sort of fast and existential howl as you may expect it to be, it is also at the beginning of the speech a speech of mourning for his wife. In our production, that is so underlined the passion between them, the dynamic between painful, personal loss of a woman that he adored through his own strutting and fretting and idiocy, if you like, informs the way that came out. It became very personal. What ied to take away have seen sometimes in versions of the play which is perfectly fine but not to my taste, that it be to dry, too intellectually extreme. Charlie you did not want that. Kenneth i did not want it to be dry. Visceral, passionate, as much Emotional Intelligence in the play as there is less optical intelligence. It can get very dry because the poetry is out dense, so brilliant, so complex. The double up with shakespeare is that if you connect all of that brilliance, all of that intellectual firepower at this incredible level with this sense that you are watching real live human beings, and there before the grade the grace of god go all of us. Charlie dealing with life and death and horror. Kenneth yeah, sure. Charlie or rage and guilt. Kenneth people, my goodness me, you can feel the atmosphere in the audience. What they have done in the beginning of the play and perhaps with the audience, backing away from this with their fingers throbbing, they have done it. Duncan, i killed one of our friends. Now what do we do they become like children almost. People may not kill a king, but they are going to do things for which they can. Ever recover in one nanosecond, life will never be the same again. You feel all of those people go, oh my god. That could be me. Charlie either the choice you made or things thrust upon you. Kenneth it is terribly moving. One of the things we have been thrilled with is people find this moving. Why should you feel moved or even some pathetic to characters who perform such heinous acts, but somehow shakespeares mastery charlie genius. Kenneth by the end when he loses her and convey either in lady macbeth sort of scent into what may appear to be madness, or what you already sense with mac beth at the end, sort of a grand thing to say, but the is soess in his soul profound, it is chilling. Of a kind of dark eternity that he shows us is so terrifying that you cant help but be moved because the price he has paid for this moment of reckless ambition is so deep and profound as to shake one to the very core on his behalf. Charlie and lead to his death. Kenneth yeah. Isnt it strange . In the end he is he is fearless and battle in the beginning. Through the power of suggestion, he is fearful and guilt laden, and what the shakespeare seem to admire in his soldier poets, both fellow, macbeth . Guts. Blood and he is right there in the end. I am going to kiss the ground before malcolms feet. He has the forest moved it, you werent born of woman and a bear against me. You know what . Come and get it. I love it, i love it, i love it. What else you got . Show me something. He just hangs in there. Somehow there is a profound respect for this man. I never ran away. And he talks to her, and compliment them both, two words, two times uses the word dauntless. And shakespeare admires, and i do, people who take whatever life throws at them, one foot in front of the other. Do . Else can you shakespeare often says that. You want to feel grander, but sometimes that is all you have to do is show up. Charlie in your own pantheon, is there 1, 2, 3 among shakespeares works . Kenneth gosh, what a question. Your life changes, you have or experience, you reacted differently to these things. You have had millie brilliant cap many brilliant conversations with harold bloom. , famouspolish scholar from the 1960s, we called him our contemporary. And hamlet sums up the process of living, that applies across many of these plays. Right now ones soul is shaken with what macbeth does to the audience. We are there. We are the lucky vessels or which this ring passes currently in this this thing passes currently in this show. Charlie five minutes before you go on, what are you thinking, what are you saying to yourself . Kenneth i am meditating. Charlie clearing your mind. Kenneth my favorite quote from shakespeare, from hamlet is the readiness is all. That is all i do. People say you have a wonderful time in new york . Oh, yes, but partly because i am at the theater many hours before any sane human being would be. I read the lines every day, do the whole play in varying ways, trick yourself to keep it fresh. Five minutes before you go on, meditate. And the other thing, i swear to god i think this is just the most fantastic thing that we have to do. It is really tingling, not an easy thing to do given one is aware of the sort of effort in terms of what we do, but it is absolutely glorious, glorious thing to do. I sometimes feel im a big fan of sports generally. It feels like you are in the tunnel waiting to come out before huge game. It is like tournament tennis or something. Some of it is up here, some of it is in the body. In our case we start with a five minute battle. Then you are oh it revs you up. We fight every day. It is raining, we are in the dark and 25 enormous fellows come out with cold steel. Charlie you have got to be athletic, too. Kenneth it is more about the discipline required on this particular job than ever before. Charlie great to have you here. Kenneth thanks very much. Charlie back in a moment. Mark rollins is here. He won a tony award for his performance in boeing, boeing. He is back on broadway playing the lead in to shakespeare plays in repertory. He is king richard in richard another in 12th night. He served as assistant director. Charleswood of the New York Times has written his presence on broadway this season has provided a miniature acting class in shakespearean acting. I am pleased to have mark rollins at the table. What a night. Happen . His these two plays coming here for you to show your stuff . Mark has taken quite a few years. Artist,cular, the director and clothing and set designer and the musical director, and the kind of core players are people that worked with me a lot when i was artistic director at the globe. When my time finished, my 10 years finished, i immediately started to want to preserve or carry on the essential core work of what we did, which was a very careful, and i hope rigorous, attempt to explore what i call original playing practices. Hopefully known from shakespeares day. So it took a long time. We had to figure out a way of mounting to productions that would be popular enough to raise enough money to make a whole new wardrobe of clothes as the elizabethans spend their money of what they were on their backs. Charlie what was the term you use in terms of original production . Mark original playing practices. That inspired what i want to the american that founded the globe. Not only intellectual inquiry into how the plate might have originated, what conditions shakes your imagined when he wrote these shakespeare imagined when he wrote these incredible place but you could explore with live audiences and live plays. So he spent the last 25 years building the globe theater and died in 1993, and i became artistic director in 1995. His thinking about the globe was really the inspiration for me, which was he demanded three things. Im a very thorough research three things, very, very materials,search, the first fact building since the great fire. A thousand oak trees went into it, line cloth, all kinds of old Building Techniques and original craft should be used as well. Charlie so the premise is it would be more inside of shakespeares head if we did that . Kenneth we confirmed mark we confirmed we would learn more about the reason he wrote the place and the reason he wrote them. The plays and the reason he wrote them. The amount of time it takes, how fast it takes, how fast did they play, were the place cut two hours, did they play very rapidly . Was it two hours just to do with amphitheaters, versus playing inside . For an actor, the space is remarkable. It is daylight. The only played in the afternoon. There are two whopping great pillars, so there is nowhere you can stand where some people in the audience wont see you, but everyone can hear you like a bell. To the fact that at that time a commentator like myself, if they went to the globe and say, i want to hear julius user, they never said, i went to see a player at the globe, they went to hear it. It immediately demanded in my time at least, a lot more rigor on eloquence. Charlie before we talk about years as plays, 10 artistic director at the globe theater. If you were asked to give a last lecture about shakespeare, what would you want us to know . Mark what comes to the top of my head may not be the deepest , your, but you just cant will never get to the bottom of his sense of humor and sense of wit and humor. It is wellknown that one of the great things he is really good at doing is marrying opposites, juxtaposing, opposing sounds, hot eyes, cold fire. Romeo says at one point. Also juxtaposing tragedy and comedy. And his deep sense of humor even the most tragic moments even in the most tragic moments still staggers me. I dont generally find it myself. I find in performance with an audience there is something about charlie the audience tells you what is yours. Collective thing that happens when a bunch of people focus on one thing. Maybe religions know this and have known it forever, but it happens in theaters as well. A bunch of people focusing on or onestory, and the case of shakespeare, and they are all in the same room, it feels like each individual is capable of something more when we are together focused on something, as if the internet is a manifestation of something that exists naturally in human consciousness. That there is a collective consciousness in the room. Charlie the brain, the coalescing of one thing is much larger than the sum of the individual parts. Kenneth so the mark the which became the globe, which is more rectangular square shaped, and the globe is circular. That collective experience of playing there for 10 years really awakened this to me, more the sense of humor of the author. It is the thing i would say that i would, i would hope would take a long time before the univer