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Sexta-feira, Dezembro 17, 2004

Something Wicked This Way Comes (Again) -- Reliving Shakespeare and the Book Parade (Haha)

THEN:

Ten months ago, February 12, 2004, the time when I was in crutches, my left foot was recovering from the traumatic car accident, the College of Liberal Arts held a program for all colleges in school -- the Book Parade. The procedures for the event were simple really. Participants in each college should creatively present any Shakespearean play on stage for 7 minutes only. The CLA teacher who handled CN chose our block (BSN1-2) to represent the entire college. She told us to play Macbeth because the plot is just simple and if presented through pantomime, it could be finished within seven minutes. To cut this explanation short, that day we made a very good performance and unlike everybody else, we did not exceed the seven-minute limit. We ended up as the unanimous champions of the first ever Book Parade.

Unfortunately, there never will be a Book Parade. And so the CN remains the undisputed champion forever.

NOW:

I was reading MS Word documents in my neat folder and I run across this 'essay' that I made on March 29, 2004. I posted this on my previous block's Yahoo! Group two semesters ago. I just feel like sharing the thoughts behind the essay to you. And yeah, this one's about Shakespeare's Macbeth. It's supposed to be spooky and all but I felt ridiculous while I wrote this one. Haha.

It started on a very dreary afternoon two days before I made the essay, March 27, 2004.

"...I forced myself to get hypnotized in front the
television. Despite being as idle as a vegetable while lying on our couch, I made myself a bit productive by engrossing myself to watching educational programs like Discovery Channel, of course. At the time, one of Discovery Kids'
programs (I totally forgot the name of the show) is being shown -- the series talked about science mysteries, by the way. As the show moved on, I got a little spooky and all, especially when they started to talk about the 'Curse of
Macbeth.' (Have you heard about this?)"
"...I was taken aback when I finally heard about the curse. It is claimed that when 'any company produces it,' quotes lines from the play, or just utters the title of the play, inflicts bad omens. And I mean BAAAD omens... calamities,
bloodshed, accidents, unexplained deaths among the actors or people behind the scenes... you get the picture."
"The news got me very curious which consequently aroused my interest in knowing more about it... I got more bits of information from the Internet. Generally, the sources I've read say that Shakespeare added real 'black magic incantations' to the lines of the weird sisters in the play, which was not liked by the folks because for them, these chants are highly valued or respected. So what they did
was they put an eternal curse to the play and to all of its productions. (Sorry, I do not feel like adding parental citations)"
"... sources that I got from the Internet... have made
a long list of the disasters that happened during the productions of Macbeth from year 1606 (year when play is first produced) up to the present."

Afraid of being inflicted with bad luck, the superstitious refer to Macbeth as 'the Scottish play' instead. Like Voldemort in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter is referred to 'he-who-must-not-be-named.'

I remember the time we were playing our pantomime version of the play, my classmate uttered the title of the play that signaled the start of the production. And another said a few lines of the weird sisters (which contains the name of Macbeth in it) backstage, just for effects.

I didn't think we've encountered bad omens that day or afterward except maybe for our cheap trophy that had been knocked down and broken twice but that was it. Yeah, maybe Maybe the spirit of Macbeth spared us from his evil attacks because unlike the other productions... we did a pantomime. Haha.



Carnaval took a nap at 1:27:00 PM

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