The Spell, by William Fettes Douglas, 1864. © National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland, The Bridgeman Art Library.

Magic Shows

Volume V, Number 3 | summer 2012

Miscellany

In 1936, as part of the Federal Theater Project, Orson Welles at the age of twenty staged a version of Macbeth with an all-black cast, substituting voodoo for witchcraft and changing the setting from Scotland to Haiti. Reflecting on his interest in film in an interview in 1958, Welles said, “I liked cinema before I began to do it. Now I can’t stop myself from hearing the clappers at the beginning of each shot; the magic is destroyed.”

On no other stage are the scenes shifted with a swiftness so like magic as on the great stage of history when once the hour strikes.

—Edward Bellamy, 1888