Page 2 of Witch Please

Chapter 2

I’d waited patiently in the wings for Dr. Krane’s retirement. He’d overstayed his welcome in the department but since he’d been at Dartmouth his entire career, no one wanted to ask him to kindly exit, stage left. The blighter should have retired years ago but the donors loved him for some reason. They continued to roll out his Frankenstein of a festival, break out the defibrillator, call “clear!” and revive the same boring bullshit year after year until the tosser finally decided he was too old to handle all the responsibilities of a biannual literary festival.

The festival was finally mine to mold into a vision of my own. I had a notebook full of hundreds of new ideas on how to make Shakespeare sexy again. Yet, Krane’s little church mouse of a yes girl suddenly had a knob she wanted to wank? Not happening. I was commander of this ship.

“All right let’s circle up.”

The production team tended to be roughly thirty people throughout the humanities departments. Once the students returned next week they’d fill in any gaps. The faces were familiar to the point of ridiculous. The reason the literary festival had begun to wane in popularity was because it was the same thing every year with little to no diversion. We reeked of predictability. As everyone began to take their seats, I mentally placed each volunteer in the chair they’d sit, who’d they sit next to and the conversations they’d have. I had yet to be wrong.

“Welcome to the shake up.” I threw down the scripts with a resounding thud as an intended exclamation point to my statement. “This isn’t even a case of dusting things off and hoping an open window will push out the stench of mothballs. We’re turningMacbethon its head. It’s the year of sizzle. We need to renew people’s interest and get them talking. We’ve become boring. Expected. Tired.”

The echoing of the scripts slapping against the wood table put an exclamation point on my words.

“Like a racehorse that’s been ridden too long, that old mare is going to pasture. We’re bringing in the Arabian. Sleek, powerful, commanding—we’re going to make people stand up and scream ‘ohhh!’ as our production rolls on.”

I gathered the scripts, doling them out to all those involved, participant by participant. I saved the little church mouse’s script for last. She didn’t even look me in the eye when taking the script from my hand with a barely audible thank you.

“College has evolved. How many freshman do you know that have even a passing familiarity of Shakespeare these days? Anyone?”

I scanned the room and of course the church mouse would have her hand raised.

“Anyone other than the Shakespeare expert?”

I watched her eyes go wide, her face flushing as her hand fell to her side.

“The point I’m trying to make is that many curricula these days are teaching more modern stories—examining prescient themes with more diversity and expanded reading lists. However—as the humanities school’s primary fundraiser for the fall term it’s been driven home on more occasions than I care to count, the expectations of the dean and the board.”

“I don’t understand.” Dennis one of the guys who usually works on rigging and lighting broke into my monologue.

“Could you please expand? What is it that confuses you?”

“There should be three witches…and why are we talking about YouTube channels and Instagram followers? Is this the same play?”

My focus ping ponged between Dennis and Imogen. While Dennis had revealed the largest and most significant change that would happen with our production for the year, Imogen appeared a beat behind in absorbing my intentions. After hearing Dennis’s observations, her passive scanning of the pages turned into active reading—a delightful strawberry flush growing on her cheeks.

“It’s a modern take onMacbeth.In the end,Macbethis about ambition, the desire to have power, and an examination of what lengths people will go to achieve those things. We’re merging the old into something easily understood. We’ll also be switching up the way we present the play. It will be presented in the round for those in attendance, but also, we’ll be live streaming it—from the point of view of the characters—with social media updates. It’s the ultimate seminar in method acting for our theater majors. We can bring in marketing and PR majors to help our actors with how to present themselves online. This has never been attempted before, and I am confident our adaption will not only be the talk of the Ivy Leagues but may get national attention.”

It appeared I had tepid buy in from most of those at the table. Imogen however had yet to weigh in.

“What says the resident Shakespeare expert?”

Her approval didn’t matter. That’s what I told myself. But, given that this was her area of expertise, and she was close with Dr. Krane, her approval held more weight than it should in this college.

“I’ll have to do a thorough read through,” she began, holding the pages of the script open as she spoke, as if the pages would set her thumb on fire, “but it’s an intriguing concept. I do agree, we’re in desperate need for modernization. And honestly anything is going to be better than what we had.”

* * *

Given the size of Dartmouth, in a typical week, unless I actively sought Imogen out, she and I never crossed paths. Since the return to campus, our preliminary literary festival meeting aside, she’d been three people in front of me at Still North grabbing a morning coffee on Tuesday. She and I pulled into the parking lot at exactly the same time on Thursday. Each of us apparently getting an upgrade to the humanities building parking from Dewey, the equivalent of the outer Siberia version of faculty parking. Either she hadn’t noticed me, or she intentionally avoided walking into the building together, because by the time I’d gathered my things and locked my door, she was nowhere in sight. She hadn’t yet provided her thoughts on my version ofMacbeth, though our next meeting wasn’t until the following Monday and I planned to proceed whether she liked my idea or not.

“Dr. Pilar, I didn’t realize you lived this close to campus.”

Of all the places she’d have breakfast on a Saturday morning, she chose Lou’s. That I even noticed her tucked away in the furthest booth nearest the restrooms in a packed to capacity restaurant on the first weekend back to campus says where my mind was at.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

There was an hour wait. It was the best breakfast restaurant in Hanover, but I had far too many items needing to be checked from my to-do list today to stand in line. At least that’s what I told myself when I sat down in her booth without waiting for a reply.

“I’m expecting someone; you can’t just sit down like you own the place.”

---