I want to prove that living with Shakespeare, in this case with Macbeth, borders on madness.
One could approach this tendency towards madness in Shakespeare as an object for scientific research,
but I do not want to do that. I want to use artistic means to explore Bloetwollefduivel (BWD) – and the madness that Shakespeare causes.
The unpredictable conclusions will reveal and demonstrate something about Shakespeare, about blood (Bloet), about madness, about myself and about all of us.
The result of the research will be a work of art.
In the first part, I provide an (inner and intimate) description of everything that surrounds the play. I have chosen to write this part in my own idiom, the “Jan”. It is sometimes referred to as “childlike”, but I myself find it more akin to the mystical work of Ruusbroec and Hadewych.
The second part is Bloetwollefduivel, the naked text.
In the third part, the text of Bloetwollefduivel is dissected and commented on, line by line, inside and out. The fourth part provides an overview of the moments when Macbeth appears in my work:
- Samain (part of the theatre text Kosmika from 1969)
- My thesis for RITCS, ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’, 1972.
- In 1987, Macbeth Party, with excerpts from Macbeth as messages on the walls.
- Body a.k.a. in 2019, in which I sought pure movement poetry, in order to exorcise the horror and transform it into an ecstatic trance.
The final part will be a performance, wild and unpredictable.
Shakespeare is Macbeth. Anyone who hates everything in the traditions that have obscured or sugar-coated the rawness of Shakespeare's oeuvre will find in Macbeth the ultimate motive for his revenge on the
theatre.
Picture: Stephan Vanfleteren