Class Act
Theater, It's A Hands-On Experience
‘Thrice to thine and thrice to mine
And thrice again to-‘
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Here she goes again.
‘What’s the line again?’, questions the crone, poking her head out from beneath her leaden shawl.
‘To make nine.’, I mouth to myself, I’m not going to feed her the line. It’s beneath me. Also, I love watching her squirm in discomfort, afraid that any mistake she makes will result in her being booted from the production. Not that it particularly matters much to me, I prefer her understudy. Suppler, prettier, unfledged.
The other two crones huddle around her and whisper into her ear as she continues with her monologue.
Ugh, how long until I can wrap this up? Whilst I don’t regret taking the lead role—it’s only fitting that a king should play a king—I do regret not realising how much of my life would be eaten up by rehearsals. One would think that they’d be better at this considering they’re a travelling Shakespeare troupe…
‘What was that?’
I move to fix my crown, careful not to tousle my hair. Surely, she isn’t talking to me…
‘Helloooo, Earth to Macbeth. What’s that you were thinking?’
I glance up to see the crones leering at me from across the stage.
‘Nothing whatsoever, just waiting for my line to come up is all.’
‘You don’t get it, do you? In the same sense that you’re playing a king because you believe yourself to one, we are also playing our roles.’
With that,
The crones’ noses stretched and yellowed,
It met with their mouths and began to bellow.
Their arms curled afold at their sides,
Shall they be the cause of demise?
“O’ Macbeth,” the three called,
“Harken upon us threefold.
You’ve had your way lifelong,
And none more shall you exalt.”
The crones, more so harpies now,
Rushed forth in a feathered cloud.
Talons clawing and beaks gnawing,
The blood spurt forth, endlessly flowing.
Unheard, Macbeth was, but he screamed regardless,
“We don’t care!” the harpies cried, tastier for the digest.
“For we be the harpies three, posters of the land and sea,
We roam the world aimed for thee, ending all immoral glee.”
In the end, there was nothing left of the lead actor apart from his prop crown and robe…
His understudy would take up the role and be lauded in the ensuing rave reviews as suppler, handsomer and wiser than the original lead.