At Mauro Sheridan, Lady Macbeth Finds Her Stride

Top: Mariam Sheriff  and Nadia Bellamy as Lady Macbeth. Bottom: Marwa Nakhi and Zaina Jaca as Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor and later King of Scotland. Lucy Gellman Photos.

When eighth grader Mariam Sheriff was cast as Lady Macbeth earlier this year, she didn’t know if she could do the part justice. 

She worried about the sheer weight of Shakespeare’s words. She didn’t want to get tongue-tied. She kept thinking back to a band concert last year, when her tenor sax stopped working during a duet onstage. And then there was that scene where she had to convince the audience that there was blood on her hands, even though they were clean.

Then a former Lady Macbeth stepped in to show her how it was done. The program’s founding director called her every week to run lines. A second Lady Macbeth scooped up half of the weight, and became a closer friend in the process. By the time opening night rolled around, Sheriff was ready.

That’s just one of the lessons to come out of an abridged, highly collaborative and richly interpreted Macbeth, which ran last Tuesday through Thursday at Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School in Westville. A long-running initiative of Elm Shakespeare Company, the show made its mark with mirror images, economical use of Shakespeare’s text, and a director’s full-circle moment that started at the school years ago.

In the process—and as teacher cuts loom across the district—it became a testament to the power of sustained, muli-generational arts education as a kind of life kit, teaching students to manage their emotional needs, take ownership of language, and share both space and collective responsibility on and off the stage.

“I think that’s the beauty in the language,” said co-director Jhenzen Gonzales, who played Lady Macbeth on the same stage 13 years ago, when she was just 10 years old. “Once you come to understand what he’s saying, it’s a work of art. It’s a masterpiece, and it’s moving.”

The moment has been years in the making. Thirteen years ago, Gonzales was a fifth grader at Mauro-Sheridan, where Jodi Schneider—then a literacy tutor—had started a Shakespeare reading group, and looped in Elm Shakespeare educator Jeremy Funke (Funke went on to work at the Legacy Theatre; he is now a private tutor). Gonzales was part of that reading group; she still refers to Schneider lovingly as “Ms. Jodi.”

The first time Gonzales read for Lady Macbeth, Schneider heard something that felt intuitively right (“She was made to play Lady Macbeth,” she said emphatically Tuesday night). Over the next weeks, the two drilled lines, mastering the language until it was just another conversation. Gonzales got to know the character, as Funke encouraged her to lean into the fierce and wild side of Macbeth’s queen.

Lady Macbeth wasn’t just crazy, Gonzales discovered: she was ruthless, savage and vulnerable all at once, impenetrable until suddenly she wasn’t. It made her fall in love with the character. 

“They really helped me understand it, and I feel like that helped me mature really well, even at 10,” she said. “Once I really got to know her, she just stuck with me. I love how fierce she is. Bold. Even though Macbeth is supposed to be this strong man who wins the war, she’s kind of like that earpiece that he has. He would not be able to do anything without her.”

Gonzales’ first performance was 15 minutes, with glitter-clad witches and a liberal interpretation of Shakespeare’s text. But for her, it was the moment she realized that she wanted to be on the stage. Over a decade later, she’s still taking those roles—and teaching them too, through her work with Elm Shakespeare’s player’s camp and her job as a special education teacher. As recently as last winter, she found herself back on the stage, working with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC.

“Even at that young age, I knew how important of a role it was,” she said. “But I don’t think I fully grasped how important it would be, much less how important it would be in my life in the future.”

For students who don’t always see themselves in Shakespeare, Gonzales is also shifting the narrative around who is allowed to perform, direct, and interpret the Bard (that’s not new to Elm, which has been having these conversations for several years and running school programs for over a decade). When 21 students signed up for the show this year, Elm reimagined the script, casting two Macbeths and two Lady Macbeths to share the load.

As they buzzed around Tuesday, multiple students swooped by for advice, so comfortable with the show it seemed that they were already halfway to Inverness and Dunsinane. A few ambled around the stage holding branches, suddenly becoming the moving version of Birnam Wood that Macbeth so deeply fears. Others ran the final battle, lifting their wooden swords as Macduff exacted his revenge on Macbeth, and students bowed to the new king of Scotland (Makye Fernandez as Malcolm).

Off to the side, Zaina Jaca ran her lines as Macbeth one last time, as her other half (Marwa Nakhi, also as Macbeth) disappeared backstage momentarily.  An eighth grader at the school, Jaca has been acting with Elm Shakespeare since sixth grade, in performances of Julius Caesar and As You Like It.

While the role “wasn’t on my list”—she would have preferred Lady Macbeth, or maybe Malcolm or one of the Witches—she jumped into it headfirst, working with Nakhi to memorize her lines. Several weeks later, she feels like it taught her to enunciate and to speak up, even when it feels overwhelming to do so.

“I felt like I wasn’t ready for such a big role,” but she rose to the challenge, she said. “It taught me to be who I am. Like, it gave me more confidence in being myself. Macbeth is a person who leads. So I gave it my all.” 

As students fanned out across the room, Gonzales watched it all, fielding questions as she ticked off items on a mental checklist. Even as she ran through act four, in which Macduff’s family is brutally murdered amidst Macbeth’s growing paranoia, she tried to keep the mood upbeat, reminding students of how hard they’d worked to get to opening night.

Her feedback was gentle, doled out in snippets. “Slow down!” she called at one point. “Let’s take a beat,” she offered at another, when a student got upset onstage. To Torhyn Myers, who plays Macduff’s child, there was even: “You can’t smile here, Torhyn! You gotta be dead, girl!” 

When the chatter backstage became too much, co-director Hannah Gellman stepped in to help. “By the pricking of my thumbs!” she yelled over the auditorium, a band room that had been transformed into a theater with neat rows of chairs for attendees.

“Something wicked this way comes!” students bellowed back, completing a couplet spoken by the witches (Kylee Maysonet, Destiny Adu Poku, and Amelia Matthews) near the beginning of the play. 

Back amidst discarded backpacks, jackets flung over chairs and neat racks of costumes, Sheriff steadied her nerves and got ready for the first show of the week. Before this year, she had never acted in a show before, she said. But when eighth grade rolled around, she didn’t want to let it go by without trying out the Bard.

At first, she worried that Lady Macbeth was too large a part to play. But as she worked on the role (“I try to think, like, maybe a little crazier, and twist up my mind a little bit”), she stopped mumbling and started to project. She developed practices to keep her peace, like taking time to herself and letting grudges go. She took the story as a cautionary tale, remembering to be grateful for what she has instead of focusing on only what she wants. In the play, it’s Lady Macbeth’s greed that ultimately makes her lose her mind.

She also learned to lean on people. When the lines seemed like a lot, Schneider started calling each week, and running them over the phone. Nadia Bellamy, who also plays Lady Macbeth, pumped her up. Nakhi, who was working on Macbeth’s lines, practiced as a scene partner.

“I like how she has a big, like, plot twist,” Sheriff said of Lady Macbeth. “She was the calm person and Macbeth was the crazy person at first, right? But she turned crazy herself, and Macbeth became calmer because he starts to accept his fate. And she just gets cut off. No one knows what happens to her.”

Bellamy, who has her own theories about Lady Macbeth, agreed that the play has taught her to appreciate what she has, from her fellow castmates to material belongings. From the role, she’s also learned a thing or two about confidence that she now brings with her off the stage, and into the classroom.

That, she said, and she feels more in touch with her anger—the sheer existence of it—than before. 

“It's very exciting and I do love doing it,” she said of the show, which marks her third and final Elm Shakespeare performance at the school in as many years. “Like the fact that I can be all these different kinds of characters, and I like that while I'm doing this acting role, I can also build connections with my fellow actors and actresses.”

As 6 p.m. drew near, students gathered backstage, at last ready for their time in the spotlight. Chatter rose and fell through the theater as friends, siblings and families filled the audience. In the seats, half a dozen phones came out, ready to record; at least one parent had brought a tripod to film the whole show. Backstage, students listened as Gonzales sent them off with a final pep talk.

New Haven is no stranger to takes on Macbeth, including La Fille du Latier’s Macbeth Muet in 2023 and Whitney White’s Macbeth In Stride at the Yale Repertory Theatre last year. But none may be as to the point as a 50-minute student adaptation in a year upended by greed and power. From the moment students swept onstage, they were ready to pump new blood into a centuries-old story, from Macbeth’s first whiff of power to his final moments at Dunsinane.

And consistently, they delivered. As the curtain opened, there were the Weïrd Sisters, dressed as if Chappell Roan had been tasked with an appearance at the court of Henry I. They circled each other, just untamed enough to seem like the aged, wild-eyed soothsayers that they are in the play. Before long, two Macbeths had taken the stage, finishing each other’s sentences as Macbeth became the Thane of Cawdor and quietly announced his ambitions to his wife.

“Stars, hide your fires!” they announced in unison, and all of the hesitation Jaca had once had sailed out of the theater. ”Let not light see my black and deep desires.”

The gems kept coming, as every student got a chance in the spotlight. As Duncan, Eden Edwards played the King of Scotland with a cool-yet-endearing edge, making the blow more crushing when guards realized that he had been killed in the night.  As Banquo—and later, his bloodied, haggard ghost—eighth grader Edie Stoehr landed the language, adding a brusque, sometimes sharp-edged lyricism and cunning sense of movement to the role.

Even small parts, like Tohryn Myers’ child of Macduff, found their moment in the spotlight, landing lines like “as birds do, mother!” with a sweet, soft flourish and simplicity that made the madness and cruelty of murder all the more poignant. As they descended further and further into madness, both Nakhi and Jaca put their own spin on Macbeth, with a kind of good-versus-evil routine that made his spiritual tug-of-war feel palpable.

Jaca, in particular, seemed to grow into the role, most fluent in the Elizabethan language when she was volleying lines back and forth with other characters.

But nowhere was it clearer than in the two Lady Macbeths, who built off of each other for the entirety of the hour-long adaptation. Together, they mined the language for the full emotional breadth of the role, capturing her cool, sharp edge and sharp mind. When Macbeth hesitated, Sheriff pushed him to action. When he seemed likely to confess, she silenced him swiftly with a pointed look. When he cowered beneath a table after seeing ghosts, Bellamy got the audience laughing as she tried to set him straight. 

And then, suddenly, it was their moment. Bellamy and Sheriff took the stage in similar white nightgowns, both drenched in the light of the auditorium. Frantically, they wrung their hands, trying to scrub out an imaginary smear of blood. On the left, Sheriff looked as though she might crash right into the floor, focused on her palms as her fingers worked furiously. On the right, Bellamy looked skyward, her face stricken, as if she was appealing to the heavens. The audience could see them unraveling word by word.

“Out, out, damned spot!” they cried. As she looked up, her eyes wild with fear, Bellamy fell to her knees, and crumpled into the stage. Beside her, Sheriff was a mirror image, telling the audience all it had to know. This was the moment she’d worked toward, and she’d nailed it.

“I feel like I calm my mind by talking to Nadia,” she had said before the show. “We just confirm each other. We talk over our scenes together. That helps me calm down.”

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