Life & Wisdom Quote by Ann Macbeth

A cool little grenade of a sentence, tossed with a smile that isn’t quite friendly. Macbeth stages the mindset she’s targeting through a sly ventriloquism: “they say.” That tag matters. It frames “the existing documentary makers” as a self-justifying chorus, repeating a creed that conveniently absolves them of risk, ambition, or responsibility. If drama can’t be made “in this State,” then no one has to try, no one has to fail, and no one has to challenge the smallness of local cultural infrastructure. The logic is circular on purpose: it’s “impossible” because we aren’t doing it; we aren’t doing it because it’s “impossible.”

Her choice of “still believe” is doing quiet damage. It implies the argument is outdated, almost willfully provincial, a superstition kept alive by habit. And “in this State” isn’t just geography; it’s an indictment of institutional imagination. Macbeth is pointing at a cultural ecosystem where documentary is treated as the only respectable mode because it seems practical, fundable, defensible. Drama, by contrast, asks for larger budgets, bigger egos, messier collaboration, and the audacity to invent rather than merely record.

The subtext reads like an early critique of gatekeeping disguised as realism: the people with access and credibility set the genre limits, then cite those limits as evidence of hard truth. Macbeth’s intent is provocation. She’s daring local makers to stop hiding behind “conditions” and admit what’s actually at stake: the fear of trying to build a dramatic culture and being seen doing it.