Lindsay native co-directing Peterborough production of Macbeth

Macbeth is coming to Peterborough later this month.

Known colloquially among thespians as “The Scottish Play,” Macbeth is a production of The Electric City Players, a community theatre collective that got off the ground in 2023. Co-founded by Lindsay native Andrew Loeb, the group aims to create ambitious, immersive, multi-media theatre experiences that help theatregoers see their present and future through the prism of the past.

That’s the mantra that Loeb, an assistant professor of English Literature at Trent University, hopes audiences will bear in mind as they take in the performance.

“My co-director, Jacqueline Barrow, and I both feel like Macbeth is an accessible entry point into Shakespeare,” Loeb tells the Advocate. “It’s the shortest of the plays by quite a bit, and it also resonates with a number of concerns that we feel are really important for our own world now. What we most want is to help people see this very old and familiar play anew in some way.”

Indeed, audiences can expect to see much of the brokenness of their own world reflected in this classic, which stars Simon T.J.H. Banderob in the title role.

“Macbeth is a play about corrupt leaders making terrible choices that hurt the people they’re supposed to serve,” Loeb says. “It’s a play about the connection between human decisions and environmental crisis. It’s a play about a marriage fraying at the edges. It’s a play about toxic masculinity. It’s a play about loyalty and family. It’s a play about grief and guilt and ambition and remorse. It’s about a world that relentlessly brutalizes the children on which its future depends. We hope people come to the show not just because it’s Shakespeare, but rather to hear it speak to the urgent crises that we face now — that we have always faced.”

Macbeth runs from May 23-25, 2024, at Peterborough’s Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte Street). Tickets can be purchased online at tickets.markethall.org.