From Boston to Nashville, Managing 'Macbeth'

‘It’ll never leave me, no matter how much it’s finished.’ 

Over the summer, Magdalene Finalist Miss Tally Arundell (2023) was one half of the Tour Management team for the ‘Cambridge American Stage Tour: Macbeth’. From the point of their handover, Tally and her co-Tour Manager Jacob had quite a lot of autonomy with the structure of their team, as well as the tour itself. Though following some of their predecessors’ footsteps in terms of Tally being both Tour Manager and Assistant Director, they trod a new path too. Quite literally, where the 2024 tour covered the East Coast, the team behind Macbeth made their way through over 10 cities across the country, from Boston to Nashville and Atlanta, and Tally would ‘do it all again in a heartbeat’.

After endless logistics and rehearsing, their journey began in the Town and Gown, Cambridge. Though not the glamour one usually imagines when they think of performing Shakespeare, the informality of the space brought a few heart warming moments, such as bar goers wishing performers luck as they waited in the wings, the wings being a corridor that led to the bar. 

Tally’s time on tour was populated by these slightly awkward performance spaces. She mentions their first show in Salem, which took place in a cinema with no wings to the sides of stage, and how the entrances were these long aisles, meaning actors were always exposed whilst walking on. Each venue brought new angles, literally. 

CAST’s Macbeth was perhaps most overtly novel in its focus on Lady Macbeth’s miscarriage, a choice that brought some nerves when performed across America in its current political climate. However, this difficult angle on the show was welcomed with praise by audiences throughout the country. In one of CAST’s legacy venues in Harrisburg, long time CAST showgoers spoke to the production team and said how impressed they were by the show, calling it the best CAST, even the best Shakespeare, they’d seen. It cemented how important CAST was, not only to the people who made it year on year, but to the communities who watched it too. 

‘It’ll never leave me, no matter how much it’s finished’, says Tally. Before the show’s close, generations of CAST alumni watched Macbeth, discussing how impactful this show has been for them, even as the years go by. She also explains how teams arrange a summer and winter catch-up after the show ends each year to keep in touch and reminisce about their wild (and only sometimes western) summer escapades in myriad performance spaces, and what they’re up to now. It’s a testament to the community spirit forged by these kinds of projects. Despite this talk of sentimentality, Tally also explains that the end wasn’t as bittersweet as one might expect. 

With each show in a new state needing re-staging and modification, each show was new, and final. When I asked her if their last show of the Cambridge home run gave their team closure, she responded that they had ‘so many last shows’.  So, what’s one more?

But after all, there’s no time to linger in Cambridge, and Tally has a lot to get on with. Alongside starting the final year of her English degree, Tally is preparing for an upcoming production of A Streetcar Named Desire which opens at the ADC Theatre on the 11 November. Assistant Directing this show has given Tally a chance to be a more involved member of a directorial team, shifting her focus from logistical to creative as she helps bring the show’s ensemble movement and surrealist style to life. 

^{Header image: Grace Garrett} 

^{Body Image: Hector Day Lunn}