In Macbeth for Act 1, scene v, what dramatic conventions can you use to convey the issues?

There are as many types of dramatic conventions to
potentially use in a staging of Act I, scene v of Macbeth (or any
scene in the play) as there are different theatrical styles and traditions.  Do you want
to stage a Japanese Kabuki style production of Macbeth?  Then you
would use conventions from the Kabuki theatrical tradition.  Would you like to stage the
scene using the conventions of Shakespeare's day, conventions that are referred to as
"original practices?"  How about a modern film version of the play? Film brings in a
whole new set of conventions, even if not a word of the text is
changed.

All of these productions of the play would rely on
different conventions.  Dramatic conventions are simply a set of rules that are
understood by actors, directors and audience as the sorts of theatrical workings that
can be expected to be used to assist in telling the story.  Different theatrical
traditions and time periods use different conventions, so the "best" ones to use would
depend on the tradition you are following.

For Act I, scene
v of Macbeth, here is an example of some of the dramatic
conventions from Shakespeare's day, or the original practices, that could be utilized to
convey the issues:

• Cast a man as
  Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare's theatre did not have female performers, and
  when Lady Macbeth says "un-sex me here", it will have an especially powerfully ironic
  effect, if the actor is a man rather than a
  woman.


• Make sure that Lady Macbeth
  converses directly with the audience in her soliloquies.  In
  Shakespeare's theater, there was no "fourth wall" between actors and audience, so actors
  never pretended that the audience was invisible or "not there."  It was a definite
  theatrical convention that actors spoke directly to the
  audience.


• Allow and encourage the audience
  to voice their opinions as the actors playing Lady Macbeth and Macbeth
  begin their disagreement over killing or not killing Duncan.  Part of the convention of
  Shakespeare's theatre was that the audience was not expected to sit quietly as polite
  observers to the play.  They cheered and jeered ( and threw things), much the way we
  might behave at a sports event today.  So, get the audience involved in voicing their
  opinions -- Whose side are they on, Macbeth's or Lady
  Macbeth's?

For more on dramatic conventions and
staging a play with Shakespeare's original practices, please follow the links
below.