They Have the Whole Universe in their Minds: Wendy Lippe on her Immersive 'Macbeth' at the Museum of Science Planetarium, Boston

The works of William Shakespeare are nothing if not complex, and the psychological depths and puzzlements of "Macbeth" are a prime example. The Psych Drama Company first delved into the play in 2021 with a critically acclaimed audio adaptation that used a sculpted soundscape – and a carefully abridged and edited text – to probe the minds of the play's two main characters, the ambitious but hesitant Lord Macbeth and his much more ruthless wife, Lady Macbeth.

The audio adaptation now comes to the Charles Hayden Planetarium at Boston's Museum of Science for an immersive experience that adds visual elements to Psych Drama Company's sonically three-dimensional audio adaptation.

The enhanced adaption is certainly timely: The play has excited renewed interest in the theater (and film) world with its timeless themes of political intrigue. In an era of populist politics and deep divisions, it's all too easy to identify with a protagonist who feels that fate has selected him to shake up the order of things, if only he's willing to shed a little blood. But how far will he go? And how will he rationalize the decisions to go there?

Taking note of the various recent and upcoming Macbeth productions in Boston, in cinema and beyond, Lippe notes, "I think this recent intensification of our fascination with this play is related to the exacerbation of the polarization of our world, and the footprint of disconnection and paranoia that the pandemic has left us with. We are returning to the Macbeth text over and over again in an effort to master and work through a world which has become polarized and terrifying, because it's a world which cannot tolerate and manage complex, contradictory thoughts and feelings."

"Psychologists who practice psychotherapy have long understood the importance of helping their clients become aware of, tolerate and manage ambivalent feelings and thoughts," Lippe, herself a Harvard-trained psychologist, goes on to note. "Though clinical case studies and theoretical articles and books on ambivalence have been published for many decades, it's only in the last few years that there has been quantitative empirical research studies supporting the idea that there are psychological benefits of being ambivalent. That being ambivalent is psychologically healthy and necessary! It helps us with improved decision-making processes, more balanced and accurate judgment, reduced cognitive bias, better problem-solving, increased creativity, increased receptivity to other people's opinions, and increased adaptability."

"It just astounds me that it's only in the past few years that we have quantitative, empirical research support for this," Lippe confides. "Like, I've known this since I was born!"

"The Play's the Thing"... for Our Times

"I think this is the call of the 'Macbeth' text at this moment in time, as we are faced with a world that is devastatingly limited with regard to tolerating and managing ambivalence," Lippe observes. "That ambivalence is no doubt in the words of Shakespeare's script. Complexity and duality. They are in the words that Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and other characters in the play speak." But, Lippe asks, "Do we feel that ambivalence?"

"So, this 'Macbeth' production that we did first as a streaming audio drama, and are now doing at the planetarium, is a deep dive into the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth."

The production – which adds visual elements to the three-dimensional sound design – is, Lippe says, a "Macbethian Mindscape."

"As a psychologist, actress, and director, I believed that a Mindscape adaptation could bring the Macbeths' ambivalence and internal conflict to life in a more vivid, dynamic and compelling manner than we find in the original play," Lippe explains. "There's something important about feeling the emotional impact of the Macbeths' inner turmoil and being drawn into their inner worlds. And then there's my other motivation – our world, with this heightened polarization, disconnection, and paranoia... being so certain about our stances. We are not holding the contradictions and dialectical tensions that are the human condition, and we are the worse for it. That's the other reason I think that this Mindscape adaptation is timely and important."

Feel it for Real

Though the text is taken entirely from Shakespeare's original, Lippe's adaptation seeks to focus on and amplify the Macbeths' ambivalent states of mind, while maintaining the immediacy and urgency of the action of the play.

"How many times have you ever seen a 'Macbeth' production where you really believed that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were going to go in the other direction?" she points out. "Never. We never believe [that things could happen other than the way they do], even though Macbeth is like, 'Well, maybe I shouldn't do this.' The urgency and immediacy of the action of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' makes it extremely powerful, and at the same time, as some scholars and psychologists have noted, it is this very urgency and immediacy that can obscure a more complex experience and understanding of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. You're so caught up in the immediacy of the action that you never really believe he's going to rethink this and stop."

"There's something about that which has always been a disconnect for me," Lippe adds. "I've been in the show three or four times, and I've always looked at the script and said, 'The words are there. Why aren't I feeling that?' And every time I've played Lady Macbeth, I've gotten to her "mad" scene, whereafter she kills herself, and I've said, 'Oh, my God, how are we here again? How am I supposed to now get on stage? I don't even believe myself. How am I going to be believable to an audience?' Because how does Lady Macbeth get here? She hasn't, in any meaningful way, struggled with ambivalence."

There are different ways to think about this, Lippe points out, citing Freud's contention that if "Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were combined to be one character, they make more sense" – they would, as Lippe phrases it, carry "a more three-dimensional ambivalence."

The Psych Drama Company's "Macbeth" is intended to be "a production where we can feel and be inside the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and be immersed in their inner conflict. In addition to the adapted text, it has an original score of music and soundscape, sound effects, and now [with the audiovisual version in the planetarium], full dome animated visuals; all of this is designed and curated to illuminate and heighten the felt experience of being inside the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth – to really live there and experience their ambivalence in a way that I've personally never felt before."

Finding Lady Mac

True to the company's name, Lippe has broken the play into psychological components of the human mind.

"We have the voice of darkness in their mind," Lippe explains. "We have the voice of conscience in their minds. And we have this mediating voice, trying to find a compromise: 'Look, can it not be all darkness, and can it not be all conscience? Can we find a compromise?'"

Lippe explains that she seeks to find a place of identification with and empathy for what might otherwise be a pair of irredeemable villains.

"How can we humanize these characters? I think the best way is to do a deep dive into their psyches and feel their inner turmoil so that we can resonate with it. I want us to say, 'Hey, we know what it feels like to struggle with a base desire, and to have some conscience about that.' We can all relate to powerful desire for something; but then I want us to also feel the consequences of their actions. There are consequences for our actions, and humanizing them in no way absolves them of their responsibility and accountability. If anything, it makes their responsibility and accountability more accessible."

Casting the characters in this somewhat different light – and gaining entry into their complicated psychologies – meant reshaping the play. "In this Mindscape adaptation, the emphasis on the internal conflict introduces Lady Macbeth's conscience much earlier, thereby making her a more three-dimensional character in her own right," Lippe notes. "Additionally, with my remixing and editing of the text, there's a much more painful conflict between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth than in the original. The violence of their conflict juxtaposed with the music of utter silence, followed by a mournful soundscape brings us right into the Macbeths' hearts and minds when the two characters have a very definite break in their union. In this moment, the change to the original text, the music, soundscape and visuals help us feel Lady Macbeth's painful cut-off from Macbeth; and we feel a more natural progression to her internal state of being overwhelmed by feelings of shame and guilt, ultimately leading to her suicide." Lippe adds, with a sigh of relief, "Now I feel and understand how I get to her final 'mad' scene."

Exploring Minds and Madness

The play's psychological tensions are explored further with the use of cutting-edge animated visuals.

"This has been thrilling for me," Lippe exclaims, "as it is an entirely new creative experience and one that I have fallen in love with! And James Monroe, Dani LeBlanc, Wade Sylvester and the entire Planetarium Team have been fantastic collaborators! They are all wonderful humans and remarkably gifted. I started by meeting with the planetarium team's visual artists and animators to explain the concept of this particular adaptation of Macbeth."

Lippe explains how she designed the mental space – the "Macbethian Mindscape" – in which this adaptation unfolds.

"I laid out a detailed description and map of 3.5 distinct 'realms' that I wanted for the visuals," she tells EDGE. "The 'Mindscape Realm' is for creating the experience of being inside the Macbeths' minds, when the viewer is in a scene with Mac, Lady Mac, or the two of them together, with no other characters present."

"When either Mac or Lady Mac has a soliloquy or when they are talking to each other with no other characters present, and they are speaking their lines in the way we are familiar with, we are in the 'conscious' part of their minds, which I have identified as Mindscape Realm 3.0," Lippe continues. "An example of a visual in Mindscape Realm 3.0 is being seated in the planetarium, and you as the viewer are surrounded by a surrealistic chamber in a castle, a courtyard, etc. That chamber then has animated, surreal distortion to create a sense of being 'within the mind.' An example would be that the visual is moving in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction, or that the visual is coming in and out of focus, or there's a ripple effect. These animated surrealistic visuals at intensity level 3.0 heighten the experience of being inside the 'conscious' minds of Mac and Lady Mac or within their 'shared mind.'"

"Mindscape Realm 3.5 is reserved for the three 'unconscious' mind Whisperers: 1) Darkness/evil; 2) Goodness/conscience; and, 3) The mediating part of the mind that attempts to find compromises between evil and goodness," Lippe says. "Whenever the viewer hears the 'unconscious' Whisperers within Mac and Lady Mac's minds, the surreal distortion animation gets intensified from a 3.0 level to a 3.5 level. So, you would see the 3.0 wavy ripple effect intensify to a 3.5 level. Or you would see the blurring of a visual intensify; or the clockwise or counterclockwise motion of a visual might speed up. The Mindscape 3.0 and 3.5 Realm visuals have a surreal M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali feeling to them."

Realms of Abstraction

"An entirely different realm I created is the 'Witches' Realm,'" Lippe adds. "The visuals for the Witches' Realm are magical, and the witches themselves are animated orbs of colorful smoke that move around in interesting ways. At times, they even appear to dance around a cauldron! The Witches always appear in a naturalistic environment with a touch of magic – so, a cavern visual, an 'ether' visual, or a heath visual."

"You as the viewer are always the center of the visuals and they surround and engulf you ... totally immersive in the planetarium, just like the 3D audio!" Lippe says. "It's as if you are the character of the story at the center of the visual, as you don't see any other 'people' or characters on the planetarium screens (other than the abstract orbs of smoke that are the witches)."

"The last realm I created is the 'Reality Realm.' The Reality Realm is for scenes where we are not 'inside the mind.' In the Reality Realm, we are always in scenes with characters other than Mac and Lady Mac, or when Mac and Lady Mac are interacting with other characters. Here I wanted 'hyper-realistic' visuals of a Great Hall in a castle, the outside of a castle, a battlefield, etc. Hyper-realism is so realistic and odd that it approaches surrealism... but in this 'Reality Realm,' we don't use any surreal distortion animation in the visuals."

"In addition to the visuals for these 3.5 Realms," Lippe continues, "I also added specific visuals such as animated splattering blood filling the screens of the planetarium. I added a 'visual' of complete blackness when Macbeth is dying, so that we are surrounded and engulfed by darkness; and we 'die' with him as we hear the three Whisperers swirling through his mind and whispering his final dying soliloquy with him. Here is where I chose to repeat Mac's soliloquy for a second time: 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player...'"

"There are other specific abstract/conceptual visuals I added as well, and if I had unlimited time with the animators, I have a long wish list of additional specific visuals I would like to add."

Diving Deep into Immersion

Immersive experiences have taken hold in the world of art; one example is that of immersive exhibitions of paintings, which use hi-definition images of famous canvases. Such shows have toured internationally for years. Might Lippe have the chance to get that additional time with illustrators if her novel approach to an immersive "Macbeth" takes off in similar fashion?

"I would love that," Lippe says enthusiastically. "Particularly now, as I think about the world implications of the story. I think it's important for theater to help us think in new ways about the world we live in; in ways that can help us be active in changing it. This immersive way of experiencing storytelling makes us part of it. We're in it, just like we're in the world. We're not a spectator. We're not outside of it, whether we like that fact or not. It is so cool to be in the planetarium, and to have all of these incredible full dome visuals all around you, and Zachary McConnell's 3D audio design, that he has now adapted to the planetarium, also all around you. I promise that you will be truly immersed!"

"The Macbethian Mindscape creates space and time for the music of ambivalence to have powerful emotional impact, even in a story that moves quickly and urgently," Lippe adds, "and even though the Macbeths do not ultimately succeed in managing their ambivalent feelings. And as our story ends, it also starts anew, with the very same questions from Malcolm's psyche, as he assumes power. Will Malcolm manage the music of his ambivalent feelings by having a conductor who can better balance dark and light?"

"And, in a world that moves and changes more rapidly than it ever has before, will we create space and time to meaningfully tolerate and manage our own ambivalent feelings?" Lippe wonders. "Will our political leaders? What are the individual and global consequences of not doing so, of living in perpetuity with polarization, disconnection, and paranoia?"

"I believe that 'Macbeth' is every person's story," Lippe adds. "It's about the world we're living in, and the devastation of the elimination of the capacity for holding duality and complexity. What does that mean for us? This is a terrifying world, just as Macbeth is a terrifying play."

Psych Drama Company's immersive "Macbeth" will be presented at the Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Science on July 20 at 7:30 p.m. and August 17 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets and more information, visit the Psych Drama Company website and the Museum of Science website.