#HER LOVE FO RHER WIFE TETHERING HER TO WOMANHOOD....... BUT HAVING TO PRETEND IN THIS HYPERMASCULINE WARRIOR CULTURE

[butchhamlet]

WAIT WAIT ITS NOT A TRANS TAKE FOR WHICH I APOLOGIZE but I (a lesbian) played macduff and in my heart and soul my macduff is a lesbian performing to this hypermasculine scottish society as a man. And every time I put on my costume, to get into character, I imagined macduff putting on her men’s clothes, her soldier’s clothes, simultaneously concealing her true nature and adopting it because this has been her whole LIFE. Thinking about her love for her wife being what tethers her to womanhood. What it means to be a good man in a world of tyrants when you aren’t a man. Nearly every performance I almost had a Freudian slip where I said “Macduff was from her mother’s womb untimely ripped,” because that’s the only time (at least in our cut) macduff refers to herself in the third person. Thinking about macduff’s role in the play as the griever, the lamenter, and how the play connects emotion = femininity with lady macker’s “unsex me here/make thick my blood”, willing femininity away from herself by forbidding her emotions. And macduff expresses such deep grief and depression so openly. Thinking about a macduff who is extremely secure in gender and sexuality foiling a mackers who is extremely insecure in gender and sexuality. Thinking about a macduff who believes her wife and children have died for her “sins.” Thinking about the scene with lady macduff and her child, where they debate the child’s “father” being dead, and lady macduff compares macduff to a bird, whom she refers to with she/her pronouns. Thinking about Malcolm’s “show as you are,” and macduff throwing down her branch, not really showing as she is, never showing as she is. I am so sorry if this is incoherent I have so many emotions for her