Casting Announced For Haunting All-Female MAC BETH at Seattle Rep

Seattle Repertory Theatre today announced the all-female ensemble of its highly anticipated and innovative adaptation of MAC BETH by Erica Schmidt. Set to run May 18 - June 17, 2018 (opening night May 23), tickets to MAC BETH are on sale now through the Seattle Rep Box Office at 206.443.2222 and online at SeattleRep.org. The Rep's production is also a participant in Seattle Celebrates Shakespeare.

Complete casting for MAC BETH includes Charlotte Schweiger (Macbeth), Sophie Kelly-Hedrick(Witch 1), Tamsen Glaser (Banquo), Izabel Mar (Lady Macbeth), Klarissa Marie Robles(MacDuff), Analiese Emerson Guettinger (Witch 3), and Laakan McHardy (Witch 2).

Shakespeare's legendary and tragic Macbeth tells the story of a Scottish general whose self-destruction is wrought when his ambition goes wildly unchecked and he descends into barbarous madness. Erica Schmidt's MAC BETH adaptation features young women playing high school-aged girls role-playing each one of Shakespeare's infamous roles - from Lady Macbeth to MacDuff to the title role itself. After learning about the catastrophic and highly publicized stabbing cases involving young American girls, Schmidt tested a theory, investigating what Macbeth and its themes could look like in the context of bullying and female friendships. "I was interested in Macbeth because I wanted to investigate what a 'witch' is today," Schmidt said. "What's our conception of it? What is truly frightening? When I hit on the idea of school girls as witches, the concept naturally followed and then I discovered all of the horrifying true crime that overlaps. This also helped me to rediscover ways to unlock the dark poetry and imagination of this celebrated theatrical work."

Seattle Rep audiences will remember Schmidt's work as the co-creator and writer of the 2011 smash hit, award-winning play Humor Abuse, a collaboration with performer Lorenzo Pisoni. Her additional directorial credits are extensive and include Richard II with Robert Sean Leonard (The Old Globe); All the Fine Boys at The New Group (writer and director); Turgenev's A Month In The Country with Peter Dinklage and Taylor Schilling (Classic Stage Company); Dennis Kelly's Taking Care Of Baby (Manhattan Theatre Club); Jonas Hassen Khemiri's I Call My Brothers and the Obie Award-winning Invasion! (both for The Play Company); Rent (Tokyo); Moliere's Imaginary Invalid, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer, and Copland's The Tender Land (all at Bard Summer Scape); Carnival (The Paper Mill Playhouse); Quincy Long's People Be Heard(Playwrights Horizons); Gary Mitchell's Trust (The Play Company, Callaway Award nominee); As You Like It (The Public Theater/NYSF, chashama; New York International Fringe Festival Winner for Best Direction); Debbie Does Dallas (wrote the adaptation and directed Off-Broadway for The Araca Group); and Spanish Girl (Second Stage Uptown).

ABOUT THE CAST

Charlotte Schweiger debuts at Seattle Rep in the title role. She has performed onstage in New York as Anya in The Cherry Orchard and Martha in Spring Awakening. She appeared in the Festival de Cannes Award-winning film The Transfiguration and will also act alongside Francois Arnaud in the upcoming independent film Rapid Eye Movement. Sophie Kelly-Hedrick also makes her Rep debut in MAC BETH as a Witch. A three-time finalist in Seattle Rep's August Wilson Monologue Competition, she has appeared in multiple Youth Theatre Northwest productions including The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Avenue Q, Legally Blonde, among others. She graduates from Mercer Island High School this June, and will attend NYU Tisch School of the Arts this fall.Tamsen Glaser makes her Seattle Rep mainstage debut as Banquo, a role she returns to after the 2016 Seattle Rep workshop of the play.Her recent credits include: By The Way, Meet Vera Stark;Iphigenia and Other Daughters; 12 Ophelias; Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake);and As You Like It. A writer and original theatre-maker, Tamsen recently wrote and performed her one-woman show STARDUST as her University of Washington Professional Actor Training Program (PATP) thesis performance. She is a co-founder of Training Grenades Theatre Company, a Seattle-based ensemble of UW PATP members. Izabel Mar debuts on the Rep stage as Lady Macbeth. Her recent Seattle credits include performances in Arcadia at Seattle Public Theater and The Chalk Garden at ACT. She will graduate from the Professional Training Program at The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts this spring 2018. Klarissa Marie Robles debuts at Seattle Rep as MacDuff. Her recent credits include Imaginary Opus (eSe Teatro), Colonize It! (Ghost Light Theatricals), Battle of the Bards: Salem Witch org*sms (Ghost Light Theatricals), IRL BuzzFeed: I Don't Need This To Remember You By (The Horse in Motion), a staged reading of Plumas Negras(eSe Teatro), and 26 Miles (Latino Theatre Projects). Analiese Emerson Guettinger makes her Seattle Rep mainstage debut as a Witch after being part of the Seattle Rep workshop of this play in 2016. She has worked locally with Seattle Children's Theatre, Strawberry Theatre Workshop, ACT, The 5th Avenue Theatre, Village Theatre, Showtunes Theatre Co., Annex Theatre, Book-It Repertory Theatre, Seattle Public Theater, and Seattle Musical Theatre. Laakan McHardy rounds out this cast, making her Seattle Rep debut as a Witch. Her theatre credits include an Off-Broadway performance in The Wolves (u/s) at Lincoln Center Theater, and regional performances in The Many Deaths of Nathan Stubblefield at Humana Festival; Macbeth, Gratuitous Nudity and the Undisclosed Costs of Questioning Surveillance Rather Than Bad Broccoli, and Midsummer's Eve at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

For more information about Seattle Rep's production of MAC BETH, please visit SeattleRep.org.

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