Brett Bailey: Macbeth Performances and Residency

FringeArts will bring South African theater artist Brett Bailey and his performance group, Third World Bunfight, to Philadelphia for a three-week residency and a presentation of Bailey's adaptation of Verdi's opera Macbeth, set in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Presented in collaboration with Opera Philadelphia, the production features a South African cast and examines post-colonial central Africa through an imaginative appropriation of Shakespeare's tale. The story follows Congolese warlord General Macbeth and his ambitious wife, who murder the king and wreak havoc in the war-torn and corrupt landscape of multinational corporations and militias. Music modeled on Verdi is infused with African rhythmic elements and percussion by Belgian composer Fabrizio Cassol, and sung in Italian with English surtitles. During his residency, Bailey will engage in research to discover how Philadelphia's history might serve as a potential starting point for new projects.