Felix Mayes is a talented multi-hyphenate who brings a lot of considerable talents to any production where they are involved. In addition to mad skills in theatre arts, feel free to add puppeteer, dancer, game master, singer and raconteur and you’ll begin to get an idea of the talent base. Born on the East Coast, Felix now is based in Chicago, creating art and making change.
Felix plays one of the Weird Sisters as well as one of Macbeth’s servants, Seyton. Part of a cryptic triptych where Felix, Ellie Gossage and Aurea Tomeski create a group that is cohesive and equally atmospheric. The Weird Sisters are very much together. Director Brian Crowe gave them freedom and they gravitated together toward frequency and putting earworms into their spellwork. They also integrated the witches into their other characters to provide a unity of purpose and delight.
Felix identifies as trans-femme and coming to Macbeth’s script in this time of gender fluidity, there is so much gendered language. Characteristics she has, Macbeth says should only be in men, yet she has them. She is already doing the things Macbeth needs.
1) When did you decide that Shakespeare was for you? I didn’t initially care for Shakespeare, I was told to just grin and bear it. I had an excellent professor in college who told us the opposite of what I had originally been told – that it is not Olde English, but modern English – it’s just poetry. I began to understand myself as a queer person and as a brown person. When I sought stories of my queerness, I found some of the language here. Shakespeare was my gateway drug to etymology and my love of words.
2) When did you first get interested in puppets? I became interested in puppetry when I moved to Chicago. As a performer, spoken word artist and storyteller, I became involved with Manual Cinema, a group that was telling the story of poet and storyteller Gwendolyn Brooks. They cast me and trained me and since them I’ve been doing puppetry every year with several companies. There are myriad types of stories told with puppetry from all cultures. In Japan, among the highest forms of art in the times of Shakespeare was puppetry. There are so many amazing poets and writers whose work is amazing, they just aren’t part of the colonial history. There are a lot of interpretations of what Shakespeare’s plays mean and what they are about.
3) How do you approach two roles like the Witch and Seyton in Macbeth - so different and within one show? It is important to integrate the Witch into every character played so there is a thread running through all of it. “As someone who brings all of myself into every role, when I do talkbacks after shows I dress as myself. I speak in Macbeth of playing the smiling Witch who then plays Seyton, the Blood Sergeant and more. I cannot let my anxiety about bigots prevent me from speaking my truth and doing my work.”
Get your tickets now to see Felix Mayes live and experience Macbeth as you’ve never seen it before. Visit https://www.shakespearenj.org/events/detail/macbeth now, running only through November 17.