{"id":12561,"date":"2015-11-11T18:19:06","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T23:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=12561"},"modified":"2015-11-25T23:40:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T04:40:16","slug":"aurora-students-pour-a-dram-of-macbeth-on-the-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-students-pour-a-dram-of-macbeth-on-the-rocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora students pour a dram of Macbeth \u2013 on the rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Allyson Whitmell has Jeremy Garbe under her thumb.<\/p>\n

When she says \u201cjump\u201d, he asks \u201chow high?\u201d When she says, \u201ckill,\u201d he asks\u2026well, if you have been living under a rock for the last 350 years, you know what Jeremy, as Macbeth, might say to his darling wife, as portrayed by Allyson \u2013 but you probably haven\u2019t experienced the Scottish play quite like this.
\nThe two Grade 9 students from Aurora are putting the finishing touches on their leading roles of Macbeth and his Lady in Country Day School\u2019s (CDS) upcoming production of \u201cScots on the Rocks\u201d, a parody of Shakespeare\u2019s classic play by Richard Nathan.<\/p>\n

\u201cScots on the Rocks\u201d opens at CDS\u2019 Performing Arts Centre next Thursday, November 19, and whether you are in for a night of erudite theatre or looking for a few laughs, you\u2019ll come away satisfied either way with a production that leaves many of the Bard\u2019s dramatic soliloquies intact, but tells the entire first act through the medium of Queen\u2019s Bohemian Rhapsody.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my first year at the school and I really love acting and drama,\u201d says Allyson. \u201cThis sounded like a really funny play and Lady Macbeth has been a really, really fun ride and journey. This play takes the characters from the original Macbeth and exaggerates them. Lady Macbeth is still really mean, but in the play it is not as obvious. Here, it is really exaggerated on how mean I have to be. I wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019m a really mean person, so when I get to play a completely different role to how I am it is a completely different experience and you really get to dig deeper into another side of yourself!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lord to her Lady feels the same way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Macbeth in our play is kind of cautious, timid and doesn\u2019t seem like he would do anything bad, but he seems to want to please his wife in any way possible so he does whatever she tells him,\u201d explains Jeremy. \u201cWhat makes this a parody is we\u2019ve added in some crazy jokes completely randomly and it makes it really fun to act in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeremy is no stranger to Shakespeare. With two parents both actively involved in Drama and English, he was exposed to the classics early on. <\/p>\n

Fittingly, this production of Scots on the Rocks is directed by his dad, Scott Garbe, a long-time faculty member at CDS.<\/p>\n

Macbeth is a play that has always been loved by students, says Mr. Garbe, and when the opportunity presented itself to \u201chave a bit of fun\u201d with a work people know so well, they \u2013 teacher and students \u2013 jumped at the opportunity. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we did Macbeth, we did it because the kids wanted to do it,\u201d says Scott. \u201cYou would think people would be turned off by Shakespeare, it would be so arcane and they wouldn\u2019t be into it, but they loved it. The kids loved parody too. They just love making fun of something that is so serious and I think Shakespeare would love it too. There is a lot of Shakespeare that is retained in the piece, including one particular moment where Lady Macbeth loses her mind, which we play straight up. We have this goofy, crazy play and then you have moments of real gravity to it and they kind of anchor the piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imitation, he adds, is the sincerest form of flattery. If you take the time to parody something, it is showing deep respect for the source material. But, for the two leads, there was never any doubt that Shakespeare \u2013 whether served \u201cstraight up\u201d or \u201con the rocks\u201d \u2013 is relevant to today\u2019s audiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire story in every Shakespeare play is so engaging, even if you don\u2019t understand it because you don\u2019t really know old English, you can see how deep it is,\u201d says Allyson. \u201cThere is so much action, so much romance, they are such complete stories that kids really get into that and find things to hang onto.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scots on the Rocks runs November 19 \u2013 21. For more information, visit www.cds.on.ca .<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allyson Whitmell has Jeremy Garbe under her thumb.<\/p>\n

When she says \u201cjump\u201d, he asks \u201chow high?\u201d When she says, \u201ckill,\u201d he asks\u2026well, if you have been living under a rock for the last 350 years, you know what Jeremy, as Macbeth, might say to his darling wife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/2015-11-12-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3gB","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 12:40:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}