Friends, this gnome has some exciting news! On Sunday, December 8, we’ll be doing a special, off-cycle book-hiding adventure/scavenger hunt that will hopefully inspire some of you to consider joining a new, short-term book club hosted by The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre this spring! Mark your calendars because we’ll be hiding 3 copies of each of the books noted below (and pictured above!):

But wait – what is the MacFestival?

Running March 6th through April 27th, 2025 (please note, the book club kicks off in January, see above), The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatr will celebrate Macbeth, Shakespeare’s Scottish play and its myriad reimaginings, all of which examine the nature of power—and to what lengths we’ll go to attain and keep it. From the website:

With innumerable revivals since its original performances in 1606, the New York Times writes “Macbeth is the most instantly accessible of Shakespeare’s tragedies: violent, elemental, familiar, short. No matter which way the story is bent, it maintains its recognizable human core of ambition and regret. Directors can emphasize its witchy aura, its bloodthirsty politics, its marital drama or critique of masculinity without endangering its essential stageworthiness.”

Over the last few years, plays about Macbeth, alluding to Macbeth, invoking Macbeth and even the play Macbeth itself, have been on the S&S Short List for plays to do. At long last, rather than choose one, we have instead decided to take an innovative approach – and go all in. We are holding the first-ever, to our knowledge, MacFestival — two months of plays and events, lectures, and artwork that are tied to the dark and tormented Shakespearean tale about magic, desire, power, and corruption.

We will kick off the festival with an all-female and non-binary topical telling of the tale, lean and fast-paced. We then will morph into a site-specific journey to the depths of our beloved Historic Y, to present It Is Magic. The festival will include other Macbeth-inspired plays, readings, lectures, and activities such as Macbitches and Peerless. We will wrap up the festival with Five Acts, Five Macs, a mini-festival in itself in which we invite other performing arts companies, including Borderlands Theater, Saguaro City Music Theatre, Winding Road Theater Ensemble, and Unscrewed Theater, to present their interpretation of an act via their expertise whether puppets, improv, music, physical theater, and more.

Special Thanks:

The Tome Gnome would like to thank The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre for reaching out, pitching, and sponsoring this lovely collaboration. We are also so grateful to them for hosting a book club and sharing copies of these amazing books with our community!