Peyton Whiteside designs a “Macbeth” where the witches wear knee-high boots.
The 2024 UCLA alumnus serves as Assistant Scenic Designer for the world premiere of Migdalia Cruz’s adaptation of “Macbeth.” The production opens Mar. 18 at the Magic theatre in San Francisco. Featuring a cast of seven actors – where both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are played by women – the scenic design reaches out to the audience in the intimate, 240-seat space. Working alongside playwright Cruz and director Liam Vincent, Whiteside helps to transform Shakespeare’s bloodiest play into a 95 minute, intermission-free plunge into 1970s New York boroughs.
“When I read it (the script), it made total sense – and it also didn’t feel like a boring Shakespeare show,” Whiteside said. “It felt really, really cool.”
Whiteside said her journey from UCLA to professional scenic design began with an unexpected discovery in 2021 at the Summer Repertory Theatre, a theater program held summers on the Santa Rosa Junior College campus. Whiteside said she was working as assistant stage manager for two shows, but spent her downtime scenic painting, which became her gateway in the field. Whiteside added that she assisted many UCLA graduate students who were designers. One who particularly stuck out to her, she said, was designer Jay Tyson for the opera “The Grand Hotel Tartarus.”
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“Scenic painting was very much my in for scenic design and falling in love with it,” Whiteside said. “Since then, I’ve really shifted more towards scenic design and set dressing and construction and fabrication.”
During Whiteside’s time at UCLA, she said professor Eli Sherlock gave her a foundation in models and Vectorworks that she now uses everyday. However, it was UCLA professor, writer-director and scholar of African American theater, Dominic Taylor’s play reading and analysis and Black theater courses that fundamentally changed how she approaches storytelling today, Whiteside added.
Designing Cruz’s “Macbeth,” demands a lot of research and care to authentically capture the boroughs of late 1970s New York, Whiteside said. Whiteside said she created mood boards, studied films such as “Blade Runner” and curated playlists to achieve a design that honors Shakespeare’s intimate staging.
“We don’t need to fall into the very many traditional tropes of ‘Macbeth’ or of Shakespeare style,” Whiteside said. “The director, Liam, has allowed us to take some huge liberties with the set, and with props and with set dressing. It modernizes, and it warps it and makes it super cool.”
The Magic theatre, as a historic building in San Francisco, presents unique design challenges with its quarter-stage configuration and proximity to the audience, Whiteside said. She added that the design team created an immersive environment for the show, including an abstract hanging element of scenery. Whiteside said this piece was heavily inspired by different textures – found materials and naturally weathered materials – and used a physical rather than 3D model, so it was a bit challenging to create.
“The audience gets to sit pretty close to the actors,” Whiteside said. “That has been influential – trying to get the set to literally reach out and really immerse them.”
Playwright Migdalia Cruz spent two and a half years on the translation and even traveled to the Isle of Iona in Scotland to pay respects at Macbeth’s burial site.
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When asked what she thinks makes this play unique to her craft, Cruz said she is proud of the way she set the witches. She added that she sees the production’s world as a place formed by the witches rather than simply foretold by the witches. Cruz said in an email that the witches in this production are gender fluid, played by a Latinx man, an Asian woman and a queer white man, adding that the witches in her previous production of Macbeth were all people of color and drag queens.
“‘Macbeth’ felt like… a story about outsiders who struggle in the world – to find their place in the world – and achieve status in a place that isn’t always asking or allowing them to enter,” Cruz said. “I chose ‘Macbeth’ because it is a play about passion and rage and love and justice.”
Cruz said she added a new scene to the production, in which Cruz lets Lady Macbeth get drunk with the bartender – who is also a witch. Cruz said she let the character speak her mind in a 1970s bar, exploring a character otherwise historically reduced to the “crazy lady in the background.”
Vincent said his description for the overall show is beguiling and dark. For him, he said, the most exciting element is portraying the Macbeths as equals consumed by their relationship, He said this exposes the double standard of traditional versions that include a male Macbeth and female Lady Macbeth. He added that he looks at the show through the lens of obsession with each other and their worlds. Vincent said people talk about Lady Macbeth’s mad scene, but in the two acts before Macbeth has a scene with an imaginary dagger – something never referred to as a manic scene. Vincent said this reinforces the centuries-long stereotypes characterizing women, but not men, as crazy or hysterical.
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Whiteside said balance between wanting to be respectful of Cruz’s writing while including her own interpretation and vision for the show, and Vincent’s rally around his interpretation, is an ongoing conversation. She said she credits many of her skills to UCLA’s theater lecturer Mark Worthington and his production design class. As opening night approaches, Whiteside added that she is most excited to see how the actor portrays Lady Macbeth’s downfall, including her fall into madness and eventual suicide. Whiteside said in this particular story, the scene portrays a really interesting take on that character because of the added backstory scene.
Whiteside said her advice to current UCLA students hoping to pursue professional theater design is the mindset that brought her to this current role – to say yes to opportunities, even when they’re unfamiliar.
“I think they (audiences) would be surprised by what the story of Macbeth can apply to,” Whiteside said. “Our story, it’s very gritty. It’s very real. It’s not such high class people, and it’s really interesting how these pretty different characters have so many similarities (to the original portrayal of the characters).”
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