Few plays telegraph the plot dynamics and setting as clearly in their title as macbitches. We know it’s got to be a cutting play about theater people vying for a key role in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, probably college-age—a sort of Mean Girls in the drama department.
That’s pretty much what it is, according to playwright Sophie McIntosh. “I think the title helps; it sets the tone in that way,” she said. “Like, If you don’t like the title, you won’t like the play. But if you’re interested in the title, you will be, I hope, interested in the play.”
McIntosh, from her current home in Brooklyn, called the Tribune to talk about macbitches, its success and the context of her work. Only 28 years old, at least nine of her plays have been produced since her grad-school days at Columbia (she’s originally from Wisconsin).
Among her other plays is Benevolent, about girls in a 1917 reform school. It is currently being staged in New York for a second time and, says McIntosh, “it has gotten more press than It did its first time around.” Other plays include Cityscrape, Road Kills and The Six-Fingered Woman.
Of them all macbitches is, unsurprisingly, the most popular. She said the title came to her at the same time as the plot for the play: “I was like, ‘OK, yeah, this title evokes the tropes that I am trying to deconstruct with this play.’ Like, people are going to come in and know immediately [it has] a Mean Girls vibe, and we are going to be exploring what it is when women are taking down other women.”
The plot, if it’s not yet clear, concerns a group of college-age drama students dealing with the upsetting fact that a freshman girl landed the coveted role of Lady Macbeth. For a stage-inclined college student working on an MFA in playwriting, it practically writes itself. But how far it goes, and what McIntosh does with the idea, is why the one-act play has been such a success.
That Mean Girls vibe? There’s more to it than it initially seems. It’s presented as arising in “a sort of male-dominated hierarchy,” as McIntosh put it. “We never see any of the men in this play, but we kind of hear them through the voices of these young women who have been conditioned to look at each other and attack each other in certain ways.”
Though such deconstruction of motives and social forces may have been popular in the young writer’s own college years, the play takes it a step further. “It never got as extreme as it gets in the play,” she said, thereby planting yet another reason to see macbitches.
At the Raven
The production being mounted at the Raven Performing Arts Center is helmed by first-time director Jeanette Seisdedos, seen in last year’s production of Macbeth as one of the three sisters, or witches. “That was a fun play to do,” she said. “I think there’s some connection to doing Macbeth last semester. And then for this season, I think it fits in really well, because I like to say that this play is very much Mean Girls meets Macbeth.
“Jeanette is a long-time Raven Player who has proven to be an incredibly versatile and talented actor,” said Steven David Martin, executive director of the Raven Players. “Working with her over the years I have been impressed by the questions she asks during the rehearsal process and her ability to see the play as a whole, rather than just her part in it. She has great instincts and a good eye for staging. And a play about five college girls needs a strong female voice at the helm, and that is what Jeanette provides.”
Martin confirmed that this play was selected in part for the connection with last year’s production of Macbeth, but said that wasn’t the only reason. “I always try to get a couple of newer plays in the mix and this one appealed because it was written by a young woman who obviously knows how college students talk. The dialogue rings authentic and believable,” he said.
Director Seisdedos welcomed the opportunity not least because the small cast—five young women—makes the job easier. She was in Little Shop of Horrors and School of Rock at the Raven recently, both of which have a large number of roles. “It’s refreshing to be in a play with such a very small cast,” she said.
With the opening of the play just a few days away—it starts on Sept. 4 and runs weekends through Sept. 20—the early signs are that the Raven might have a season-opening hit on their hands. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the six-play series that comprises this season of the Raven Plays begins with macbitches and concludes with Mean Girls (June, 2027).
Still, the playwright herself wonders if it’s lost some of its edge with changes in college slang in the five years since she wrote it. “I already think, like, oh my gosh, is it kind of a period piece? Because it’s very much representative of my college experience. I graduated Class of 2020, so I’m like, oh my gosh, like, the slang has already changed so much in the last six years. It’s crazy.”
As the Bard might well attest.
‘macbitches’ runs weekends from Sept. 4-20. Information and tickets at raventheater.org.
