In Edison’s student’s version of the Scottish play, Lady Macbeth says ‘Double, double, toil and trouble’

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MILAN —The imagination of recent Edison High School graduate Zane Fannin has given Lady Macbeth even more urgency to ensure her husband becomes king of Scotland.
Fannin has penned a backstory to the lady, a woman of steely determination, one who strives to keep her ambitious husband from becoming too passive in his quest for the throne.
Fannin’s play, “Bloodstained Hands,” was given a staged reading at the Ohio Educational Theatre Association’s state thespian conference at Bexley High School.
In Fannin’s roughly 45 minute, one-act play, Lady Macbeth is one of the three witches who prophesize Macbeth’s ascension to the throne.
“I thought she would be a cool character to delve into her backstory,” said Fannin, who will study animation at Ohio University in Athens.
Judging from the reaction of the people in the audience at the conference, they agreed with Fannin.
“People seemed to enjoy it,” he said.
Fannin said his fellow student thespians, who didn’t wear costumes, performed the staged reading of the non-musical play in a classroom with “bare essentials.”
Fannin said following the reading, people approached him and said they enjoyed the play. The incoming college freshman said he predicted correctly how the audience would react at specific moments.
“There (were) some gasps and I was really happy with that,” Fannin said. “I was like ‘Yes, I did my job!’”
“It was really awesome to see something that I had (written) come to life,” he said, describing the experience as “watching your brainchild grow.”
Fannin said he didn’t set expectations before he started writing.
“I just wanted a story that I felt was good and I felt like the story was good,” he said.
Fannin said he might have future plans for the play and wants to refine it, but for now he wishes to concentrate on college.
Edison drama club advisor Rex Stanforth said the play boasts strengths.
“The language seemed appropriate for the time,” Stanforth said. “It does reflect well on his storytelling ability.”
Stanforth said he originally hoped to have a festival of student-written work, and Fannin was one who came through.
Fannin said he’s submitted screenplays to a creative writing club at Edison, but “Bloodstained Hands” is the first to receive a performance.
There was no eureka moment that led him to write the play, he said. Fannin was in the library looking for a book to read, came across “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare,” browsed through it and Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene inspired him.
Fannin said Shakespeare is one of his favorite authors because “of the way that he can explain human emotions.”
He began to understand the Bard’s writing in third grade, when his sister, Shawna, who is 10 years older than him, read Shakespeare for high school.
“I thought it would be cool to read what a high schooler is reading,” he said.
Fannin was hooked.
“He just has this fundamental grasp of how we feel, how we see the world,” Fannin said.
His favorite Shakespeare works are “Macbeth” and “Hamlet” because they’re “epic” works, he said.
Much of Shakespeare’s writing was in “blank verse,” containing 10 syllable lines with five accents.
He “did it so skillfully that even though much of the language (is) poetry, it didn’t sound like you were listening to a long poem,” Stanforth said.

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