Fair is foul and foul is fair (Macbeth)

Thick fog. Three crooked witches blessed with equally crooked noses fill the auditorium with their eerie voices. And out comes one of the most famous quotes from Will's Macbeth:

First Witch

When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch
When the hurly burly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.

Third Witch
That will be ere the set of sun.

Why dedicate a post to this famous opening scene? Well, I saw the play last Wednesday at Het Baken, a secondary school in the Dutch city of Almere, where I teach English - or at least try to. The actors? Fourteen, fifteen and sixteen-year-old gifted students in kilts, whose mother tongue is Dutch, while they performed the play in near perfect English! A tremendous feat, I dare say, and one that deserved a much higher turnout. Yet this being Holland, let's blame the weather.

Nonetheless, I hope this will herald a new annual tradition at Het Baken: performing a classic like Macbeth in a foreign language.

Below, some pictures I took with my brand new Nikon D5000 (still practising...). The last pic has my esteemed colleague Teresa on it, who not only teaches English, but also directed this play.