The Weird Sisters Project

It is the constant reworking and elaboration of old material — call it
plagiarism if you like — that is the strongest sinew of tradition.
— Richard Schechner

In the spring of 2004, I was in a university course called "Shakespeare
Adaptations." For the final assignment, I decided — against my better
judgment — to compare two radical adaptations of Macbeth: Charles
Marowitz's a macbeth and Richard Schechner's Makbeth. Two brilliant
men, working separately on opposite sides of the Atlantic in 1969, who
without knowing it (or maybe knowing it) both wrote their adaptations
within the same year or so of each other. What attracted me was what they
both did with the Witches — the Weird Sisters — and how far they pushed
the magical and creative forces of the play.

The paper was a last-minute scramble finished over a dance competition
weekend. It was also, it turned out, the seed of something else entirely.

By the time I handed it in, I was already thinking about my own
adaptation. The question the paper kept circling — what happens when you
stop treating Shakespeare's text as sacred and start treating it as raw
material — had become impossible to ignore. Marowitz and Schechner had
done it in 1969. I wanted to find out what it looked like now.

This project collects everything that has come out of that original spark:
the paper, the story behind it, and the adaptation itself, which is still
being written. Everyone knows what happens when you deal with Macbeth.
I should've known better.

The Paper

The Weird Sisters and Dark Powers: Metaphysical Aid in Two Adaptations
April 5, 2004

The academic essay that started everything. A close reading of Marowitz's
a macbeth and Schechner's Makbeth, examining how both playwrights
expanded the Witches from peripheral prophets into the governing force of
the entire play — and what that transformation does to Macbeth himself.

The Weird Sisters and Dark Powers: Metaphysical Aid in Two Adaptations

A university paper written in a single frantic weekend that somehow became the seed of everything else. A close reading of Charles Marowitz’s a macbeth and Richard Schechner’s Makbeth — and what happens when you stop treating Shakespeare as sacred.

Four SidesJames McCullough

The Origin Story

In the Beginning: The Paper That Started It All
June 16, 2005

How a dance competition, a deadline, and two quotes found at midnight
turned a university assignment into something I couldn't let go of. The
story behind the paper, and how a conversation in a hallway with my
friend Maki became a collaborative adaptation.

In the Beginning: The Paper That Started It All

Thursday, June 16, 2005 This whole project stemmed from a class assignment when in University (I graduated summer of 2004, and the assignment was at the end of the Winter semester in April 2004). The course I was in was titled “Shakespeare Adaptations.” Going into something like this, you start

Four SidesJames McCullough

The Adaptation

Macbeth/Malcolm
Work in progress — 2004–present

An original adaptation in which the Witches replace every institutional
authority in Macbeth's world: the state, the domestic sphere, the divine.
Malcolm runs parallel to Macbeth from the opening scene, haunted by the
same forces — raising the question of whether the restoration of order at
the play's end is restoration at all, or just the next cycle beginning.