400 years ago a piece of text was published and performed, and to this day we still talk about the themes that came with it. William Shakespeare was a man ahead of his time, his views differed from those around him and his ideas paved the path for future decades. This makes me wonder, is William Shakespeare a crazy one? Considering the criteria learnt from last year, I would be inclined to say yes, he is.

β€œMacbeth” is arguably Shakespeare’s most famous work, and rightfully so. I’ve made it clear many a time that reading doesn’t sit well with me, but I have to appreciate what β€œMacbeth” has done for the rest of humanity. On the rare occasion you see me pick up a book, not once do I analyze what is truly being said, but this time that changed. Coming into this project I knew I would struggle, but that just pushed me to go even deeper and carefully deconstruct the contents of this play and connect them to a contemporary time. I’ve always been fascinated by language, how language developed and changed over time, how sounds from a mouth can be taken in and turned into sense, or how the vast diversity spanning the globe can all mean the same thing. I have never been able to wrap my head around this concept and I’m afraid I never will be. Today, the English I speak is quite different from the English back then, it gets to a point where I wonder if it can be considered the same language, and at what point does it become a completely different language, slang, or just words used in different cultures. The words Shakespeare used are carefully crafted and tell a bigger story, there is purpose and meaning behind everything said, but at first glance, it’s just entertainment.

β€œWhat do the timeless themes of β€œMacbeth” reveal about our society today?” Everything you encounter has a theme but you don’t know or acknowledge it, this realization came to me when the word theme was properly defined. β€œMacbeth” contains a variety of themes that may not be seen at surface level, but after reading through time after time, the ideas that Shakespeare wrote about four centuries ago, still manage to play an important role in life today. This is what makes Shakespeare so special, and I’ve finally realized why this man from Stratford is being talked about in my lifetime. Now knowing what Shakespeare was getting at shifted my view and I began thinking about myself, where I fit into these ideas, and how are they present in my life. These thoughts told me a lot about my character, told me about my values and what I believe in, and inspired a deep level of personal thinking. These constant ideas separate me from where I was last year, my thought process has changed and I’m focused more on the journey than the destination.

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When the time came to display our knowledge in the winter exhibition, we were asked to adapt the play without changing Shakespeare’s words. Knowing that I would be presenting in front of a live audience, the idea of memorizing old English didn’t fill me with joy. However, I would eventually realize that this was a blessing in disguise as Shakespeare knew what he was doing, he knew how to write, and I learnt that his style made reading much easier than first imagined. I was constantly questioning how I’m supposed to adapt the play without changing anything, but I was looking at it the wrong way. All I was doing was contemporizing his play and making sense of it in today’s world, and I would do this through the themes. Themes tell us so much, they are so much more than what I thought they are, my life is somewhat structured around a variety of themes. This understanding was by far the most crucial part of my learning, knowing this made my job much easier. This is what I mean by the process, doing the hard work early on has such a positive effect on what comes next and I plan to carry this lesson with everything in life. I genuinely can’t believe it’s taken me 16 years to come to that realization, but at least I got there.

Act 5 Scene 5 of Shakespeare’s β€œMacbeth” is a turning point in the play, this scene is the climax of β€œMacbeth”, and it is here where the tragedy fully unfolds. Macbeth’s ambition leads him to the brink of destruction, and he ultimately pays the price for his greed. When Macbeth hears the news that Birnam Wood is moving toward Dunsinane, he begins to feel fear for the first time. However, his fear is paired with ambition as instead of running away, he β€œwill die with harness on his back.” In my adapted version of this scene, we are set on the soccer field where the battle goes down. Macbeth is the captain of the team with Seyton as his vice-captain and the messenger becomes the referee. Macbeth is confident that he can take his team to victory, but he quickly realizes that it may not be possible. Despite losing confidence, Macbeth gives everything he’s got and leads his team to fight until the very end. The scene serves as a powerful reminder to never let ambition become the driving force in one’s life. Although Macbeth does not live to see the consequences of his actions, his story serves as a cautionary tale for all future generations.

As soon as I had finished performing my play I felt that it was the worst possible end to the work I had put in during the weeks leading up. Coming off stage with only presenting about half of what I wanted to didn’t feel good. During the moment I was truly just disappointed, disappointed with myself and only myself, there was so much I could’ve done to avoid this but at the moment, nothing came to me. I’ve somehow built the reputation in PLP of the β€œcool guy” that doesn’t care, and it may seem like that to my teachers and peers, but in reality, it’s quite the opposite. The day after the exhibition I was off for a vacation and I was hoping that all these thoughts would vanish and I’d stop thinking about what happened as it was in the past. Of course, that didn’t happen as a 10-hour plane journey with nothing to do had my head spinning thinking about what I should’ve done. Why didn’t I just improvise using the skills I built from last year’s Destination Imagination? In truth, I just didn’t know what to do. Although the first few days of my vacation were to some degree ruined, I’m glad that this happened. These thoughts proved to me that I care, when I look at the bigger picture, showing this emotion did nothing but good to me, it taught me a lesson that I will never forget.

Looking back this project was more than just a project, learning about β€œMacbeth” is more than what it seems, it tells us about ourselves, and what it means to be human and that’s something to remember. The themes in β€œMacbeth” will never go away, they will always be able to be applied to anything, and that’s why the connection to β€œAvatar” ended up making sense. The past month and a half was a learning experience, possibly the greatest I’ve had yet, it has laid the foundation for so much more to come and shifted my view to something completely different.