With a resume that spans working with CNN, TIME and The New York Times, Medill Prof. Craig Duff has seemingly done it all. In 2012, he started at Northwestern as a journalism professor, while continuing his passion for acting along the way.
Duff is part of the Advisory Board for Invictus Theatre Company. He also acted in Invictus’ “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” which opened last November and ran through December.
Adapted and directed by Chicago-based theatre guru Sarafina Vecchio, “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is a Shakespearean tragedy following a Scottish general whose encounter with a mysterious prophecy sets him on a path of ambition and power. Duff was an understudy for three tracks: Lennox, Seyton and Actor 1. When one cast member had to leave the production, Duff played Lennox for most of the play’s run.
Duff said coming to Medill was “a natural sort of evolution” for his career. A faculty member for over a decade, he now teaches courses on video reporting.
The Daily sat down with Duff to discuss his acting history and what he learned during his time performing in “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
The Daily: Tell me about your background in theatre. What led you to acting?
Prof. Duff: When I was a kid … I would turn the basement of our house in rural Ohio into a theatre. … As a sophomore in college, until my mid-20s, I was involved in about 25 different productions … both in university and the local playhouse.
During COVID, just by accident, I had had tickets to go see “Julius Caesar” at a small company here called Invictus Theatre Company, and they ended up canceling the most of the run because they had a wave of COVID, and so they didn’t have enough actors to actually do the show. In the course of getting my ticket refunded or replaced for the next show the next season, they asked if I was an actor, and I said “Yeah.” And they said, “Well, we’re having a class in January that you might be interested in.” So, I took a class where we did “Macbeth” called “The Scottish Play,” (for) over six weeks, and every scene, we would change characters. I emerged out of this thing thinking, “This is fun. I want to do more of this.” So I took more classes with different folks here in Chicago, had my first audition after some 35 years and was cast as the lead in “Measure for Measure,” which is one of Shakespeare’s late comedies.
The Daily: What do you like about Macbeth specifically?
Prof. Duff: There’s great poetry in the script, lots of scary things in there and amazing characters in it. If you look at all the marriages and couples in the Shakespeare canon, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth probably have the best marriage, even though it goes completely off the rails. … There are lots of great lines, and this particular production was very big, very vigorous and very intense.
The Daily: How do you think your experiences influence your approach to telling stories now, compared to the acting you did as a teenager?
Prof. Duff: (Acting) has a lot to do with listening, as much as it does talking. … It’s not just spouting lines and saying them the right way. That’s something I developed as a skill as a journalist and storyteller for a number of years: listening to people and trying to understand where they’re coming from. What we teach here in Medill has really helped me now, as a much older adult, doing this kind of work on stage. I’m listening more actively, and that’s what informs a lot about how successfully I can embody a character.
The Daily: Is there anything I didn’t ask that you would like to say?
Prof. Duff: I’m working on finding a way to take what I do and what I’ve been doing in this incredible career I’ve had in journalism and video storytelling and bring that to the stage. I’m working right now on trying to find ways to simultaneously make a documentary film and use the same elements to create a stage version.
It is really special to have these places in a world where … everything now is digitized, mediated, and now artificial intelligence is coming in and taking part in storytelling. I want to back up and say, “Let’s get back together in a room and tell stories to each other.”
Correction: This story was temporarily removed from The Daily’s website and republished after several misquotations were corrected. The Daily regrets these errors.
Email: valentinavalcarce2028@u.northwestern.edu
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