1. GENERAL HEADING: Performance Exercises

2. TITLE OF EXERCISE: "Staging the Murder of Banquo" (Macbeth 3.3)

3. GOALS: To encounter the practical questions and generate solutions to the staging problems of the First Folio scene; to realize a textual interpretation theatrically.

4. NUMBER OF STUDENTS: Groups of 5 students.

5. EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES: Open space for rehearsal and performance; copies of 3.3 as printed in the First Folio.

6. CLASS TIME NEEDED: 45 - 90 minutes, depending on number of groups.

7. STEP-BY-STEP DESCRIPTION: Group members confer, do their own casting, and stage the scene so as to confront the various problems (and fill in the many silences). Students should be encouraged to slow the violent action down below full speed, in order to clarify their decisions and to avoid injury. Groups perform for each other, then discuss the textual and theatrical cruxes.

8. POINTS FOR OBSERVATION, DISCUSSION:

• How or why does Fleance escape?
• If the stage illumination did not vary at the Globe, what is the function of the torch?
• Who carries the torch in and where is it at the end of the scene?
• How old is Fleance?
• What kind of "images" do you wish to present to your audience (e.g. in terms of the light-darkness imagery running throughout the play)?

9. SOURCE/REFERENCE: Prof. Alan Dessen, University of North Carolina

10. ADDITIONAL READING: N.A.

11. VARIATIONS: Follow up group work with an individual essay assignment, in which the student describes how s/he would stage the scene, what this staging is intended to communicate to the spectators, and how this scene would contribute to the specific pattern of the rest of the play. From Prof. Edward Rocklin, California State Polytechnic University.