This monodrama, written in collaboration with composer Tomàs Peire Serrate and soprano Michelle Rice, was premiered at UCLA in June 2022. The Queen My Lord Is Dead seeks to provide an answer to the fate of one of Shakespeare's most controversial characters. For more information, please visit our page.

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Synopsis:

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King Macbeth’s brief reign is almost at an end. Malcolm’s army amasses on the horizon, and they are eager to avenge former King Duncan’s murder and restore his son to the throne. Alone in her chambers, Gruoch, Macbeth’s wife and consort Queen, contemplates her situation with razor sharp clarity. She knows now that suicide will offer her an easier and more dignified death than Malcolm will. Though she remains unafraid and determined, she finds that she cannot end her life—something from deep within her is making her hesitate. Following the tangled pathways of her mind, Gruoch revisits memories that have been long suppressed, of her own mother, her first husband, and her son. These touchstones of her past life, her life before Macbeth, reveal how much her trauma has transformed her over the years. While grieving the loss of the happier woman she once was, she feels the presence of Duncan’s ghost. Gruoch confronts him unapologetically, enraged that he would appear, as if he himself was not also guilty of murder as a means to an end. She dismisses him and turns again to her dilemma, resolving to take control of her fate once and for all.