Kabuki Lady Macbeth

As Shakespeare’s newly staged plays captured the imagination of Londoners in the 1600s, a half a world away in Edo (now Tokyo), audiences flocked to Kabuki, seventeenth-century Japan’s popular form of drama. Hundreds of years later in March 2005, Chicago Shakespeare Theater brings both the power of Shakespeare’s drama and the beauty of the Kabuki art form to life with the world premiere of Kabuki Lady Macbeth, conceived and directed by renowned Japanese master of Zen arts and theater director Master Shozo Sato, with modern poetry written by Karen Sunde, based on Shakespeare’s story. This interpretation of Shakespeare’s dark tragedy will feature veteran Chicago actors Barbara Robertson and Michael F. Goldberg.

Shozo Sato’s conception of Kabuki Lady Macbeth is an interpretation of Shakespeare’s story focusing on Lady Macbeth’s journey, her desire, and destiny to become queen. This world premiere adds to a roster of work in which Sato has received national and international recognition for his adaptations of the plots of well-known Western classics to introduce a new genre in the conventions of Kabuki.