The birth of Macbyrd

Here I am back blogging in 2014. Last ‘term’ (once a teacher, always a teacher!) I was trying to get my head round the concept of theatre that is ‘cutting edge’ and which ‘breaks barriers’ and the truth is, despite seeing quite a few plays, I couldn’t find anything that really and truly did it for me. I haven’t given up and have visits planned which you can be sure I will tell you about. Also, please (and here’s a test to see if anyone is actually reading this!) tell me what you think is cutting edge and I’ll see if I agree. Anyway, in the meantime I thought it only fair to put myself and The Rudes on the line and tell you about how we make plays. I intend therefore over the next few months to open up the murky world of my brain and tell you what is going on as I write our summer play. So here goes!   

Back in September the word ‘Macbird’ came into my head (I don’t know where from; I had definitely not heard it before. See below) with the idea that it might be fun to write a version of Macbeth set in the bird world. I vaguely knew what it was about. I subsequently wrote this.

“It’s 1940 in the Sussex village of Jevington. George, a retired mechanic, cheerfully tends his vegetables (for the war effort) when his wife, Lil, comes out with a cup of tea, a piece of delicious upside-down cake, and… a letter from The War Office. ‘What’s this?’ he says. ‘What’s this?’ Above in a cotton wool sky bombers set out across the channel.  But clouds are menacing, bubbling up like ink blots above the Downs. Magpies gather, hopping in a circle on their twiggy legs. ‘What’s this?’ they cackle. ‘What’s this?’ And then, with clattering wings, they seem to screech, ‘Peck out his eyes! Peck out his eyes!’ But it’s not to George they croak. A raven, black, and sleek as silk, lands nearby on a branch, head held high and wings outstretched, bouncing like a tight-rope walker. ‘Peck out his eyes! Peck out his eyes!’ the magpies call, lowering their bodies subserviently. ‘Your time has come, Macbird,’ they whisper. ‘Listen to the wind! Peck out… his eyes!’ Amidst the cabbages, broccoli and comic absurdity, a dark and menacing intrigue simmers as a power struggle breaks out amongst the birds.”

At this point I didn’t really know much more of the story than this. Then…disaster! Someone told me that there was another play called ‘Macbird’, an obscure 60’s American play about Lyndon B Johnson. His wife was called ‘Bird’. My story was clearly different and I couldn’t get ‘Macbird’ out of my head, so someone suggested ‘Macbyrd’. A door opened. This was the correct spelling. Like ‘wytch’ and ‘wyerd’ it felt ancient. Ango-Saxon. And the characters started spilling out. Macbyrd, Wormwood, Cygnus, Pen, Thorn, Yewberrry, Nightshade, and so on – and then the story followed easily. Once they are named, they are alive. The life is in the name. Creatures from another world. And the story was just what they did. I then created a human time context, one of my favourite years, 1940, and I created humans to go with them, George Beeskep, a retired mechanic, Lil Beeskep, his wife, Cedric Lilywhite, a little man in a suit with a briefcase from the War Office up in London, and others.

I haven’t started writing yet. That’s not how I do it. I have to create all the pieces first (like a puzzle) in random order and then in a huge flurry of activity with cards stuck all over the wall I put it together in six weeks. I will tell you about it as I go along. At the moment I’m collecting words, phrases, poems, songs, gags, images, visions – and music. Musical phrases suggest events, so I collect them on my guitar (or this time round the piano). And I know now mainly what it is about. I can tell you this much.

It’s about the way the village’s life is disrupted when The War Office takes over a field and builds an airfield. But, while the human world provides a context, the main story sees the events from the birds’ point of view that live in the valley. Macbyrd is a raven, a minor clerk who has risen to become mayor of Aviana through force of character & political nous. He is content to defer to the Leader, Cygnus, an effete and over-refined swan, who with his partner, Pen, luxuriate in their own wealth, beauty and established status. But when magpies predict that ‘his time has come’ and that darker, cleverer, more powerful birds will rule the sky, provoked by his bitter and ambitious wife, Wormwood, he begins to think the unthinkable. Then when the human world intervenes and the pond is ripped out by machines he is convinced that he is destined to be Leader and kills the swan in a titanic battle. When Cygnus’ body is found in a ditch we see the events from the human point of view as the local bobby, PC ‘Dog’ Wood, investigates. The play is on one level a comedy of manners in that it reflects the idiosyncrasies of village life and wider society.

But, like all our adult plays, it is intended to provoke thought. Macbyrd feels obliged to preserve the status quo and observe moral values, but the feeling that he is a better, more capable, more worthy being gradually overwhelms him and makes him resentful of the fact that Cygnus is only there because of wealth and traditional, social and hierarchical structures – and the rightness of his case becomes greater in his mind than the wrongness of the act needed to change things.

So it deals with the way moral principles can warp through a sense of injustice - and bitterness can fuel extreme behaviour. It will be funny, but provocative and dramatic, too. Aristophanes meets Macbeth. Lyn Gardner pointed out that our antecedents are found in ‘commedia, Brecht, agitprop and magic realism’ and all of these will be found in the play. We work in a very conservative area and cannot be, nor wish to be, political, but we do wish to challenge and show how resentment develops and a sense of injustice drives someone to extreme behaviour. And, of course, the skies above Jevington in 1940 are a reminder of another little man who rose to power through force of character & political nous on the back of bitterness and resentment. We want our audience to tie these things together in their minds. Our roots in commedia typically will be evident, but, unlike last summer when we chose to work more traditionally, we will use the principles of commedia more, rather than the ‘archaeological artefacts’ - such as in the use of archetypes and by finding movement in the body language of animals as the basis for our technique.

More next week!