Editing MacBird! (section)

== Plot ==
The play burlesques Shakespeare's ''Macbeth'', with lines drawn from other plays such as ''[[Hamlet]]'', and ''[[Richard III (play)|Richard III]]'', with [[Texas accent|Texas]] and [[Boston accent|Boston]] accents. The plot follows MacBird from the [[1960 Democratic National Convention]], when he becomes John Ken O'Dunc's [[Vice President of the United States|Vice President]] ("Hail, Vice-President thou art!"), to Ken O'Dunc's assassination, at the urging of Lady MacBird. Robert Ken O'Dunc then defeats MacBird at the [[1968 Democratic National Convention|1968 convention]].

In the play, [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] becomes "John Ken O'Dunc", [[Lyndon Johnson]] becomes "MacBird", [[Lady Bird Johnson]] becomes "Lady MacBird", etc. As Macbeth assassinates Duncan, so MacBird assassinates Ken O'Dunc. As Macbeth is defeated by [[Macduff (Macbeth)|Macduff]], so MacBird is defeated by Robert Ken O'Dunc ([[Robert F. Kennedy]]).

The play also features the [[Three Witches]], in the form of a [[student]] radical, a [[Nation of Islam]] member, and a working-class union member.  The recently deceased [[Adlai Stevenson II]] was depicted as 'The Egg of Head' (the term '[[egghead]]' having been coined in the 1950s to describe intellectual supporters of Stevenson).

In a 2006 ''[[Washington Post]]'' interview, Garson said she was not seriously accusing Johnson of being complicit in the Kennedy assassination:

<blockquote>"People used to ask me then, 'Do you really think Johnson killed Kennedy?'" Garson, when she was 65, recalls. "I never took that seriously. I used to say to people, 'If he did, it's the least of his crimes.' It was not what the play was about. The plot was a given."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400993.html|title=She Hopes 'MacBird' Flies in a New Era|last=Horwitz|first=Jane|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=2006-09-05|access-date=2018-07-10|language=en-US|issn=0190-8286}}</ref></blockquote>

''Macbird!'' began as a short satirical sketch by Garson, a recent graduate of the [[Opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War|anti-Vietnam war movement]] at [[University of California, Berkeley]]. She developed the piece into a full-length play with help from writer/director Roy Levine.