Globe Education Online

This is Edward's seventh blog entry for the 2005 production of The Tempest, where he talks about the performing The Tempest to the public, conitnued rehearsals, and changes made in light of audience reactions.

First Performance

It's happened now, hasn’t it? We’ve done five shows so far and I’m about to do my sixth. I’ve never ever been as nervous as I was before our first show. It's very frightening to look through the grilles and see all those people standing there… I was a bit like a rabbit in the headlights, but it's such a buzz to play with them and the cheering at the end was incredible. I’ve never played in a theatre where you can interact so closely with the audience – it's not just that you can see everybody and they can see you; you share a communal space and they’re very much part of the story. I’m becoming more and more comfortable with that aspect of the space, although I had a bit of a panic day yesterday and thought everything I was doing was bad. Tim [Carroll], our director, pretty much told me to stop worrying and just do it! There's only so much you can do once a show has opened; you can tinker with bits and pieces but you can’t become a different character (and you had six weeks of rehearsal to work out characterisation). All you can do is go out and do your best. If people like you, they like you – and if they don’t, you have to accept it. If there wasn’t any fear involved, acting wouldn’t be as much fun.

Audience Reaction

Apparently ‘first preview’ audiences here often include a lot of ‘Friends of the Globe’, but several people mentioned that the audience for our first show was more representative of a ‘normal’ Globe audience (if there is such a thing!); we had school groups and foreign students which helped to create a great energy. They seemed to really go for it! There's a certain amount of audience appreciation for the enthusiasm and joy with which it's played; when actors put in 100%, people are more willing to give a lot back and to be led wherever the actors take them.

I can’t say how easily the audience followed the story and picked up the changes of character because I haven’t really spoken with anybody who's seen it. They responded in a very engaged way. I know that, as an actor in the production, I enjoy playing each moment so it doesn’t matter if I get lost at points within the whole. Hopefully people in the audience can enjoy the experience as a series of moments too. I’ve begun to realise that this isn’t the kind of production where each actor must have a through-line from start to finish, as it's more like a series of moments or scenes that come together. People can take from that what they will.

The audience get to know some characters more easily than others. Miranda and Trinculo have several long scenes in succession, we get to know them and see their journey through a scene. My Trinculo has a Northern accent and they can immediately click on to that too, although we didn’t set out to define characters using accents (Trinculo has always spoken like that). On the other hand, a character like Antonio has one scene and then pops up in another scene where he has one line! We see him plot the murder of Alonso with Sebastian [II.i] and then he disappears – in our play, you don’t see him again because we’re playing different characters. When he does pop up for his one line, I think it's tricky for the audience to recognise him: ‘Oh, wait a minute, who was that? Antonio?’ I have to work harder to help them make that connection.

Continued Rehearsals and Changes

At the moment, we rehearse in the day and perform in the evening from 7.30pm. I’m quite tired! During rehearsals, we try to make the scenes sharper and more focussed, so that means making lots of little changes. Yesterday we worked on the opening; originally Alex [Caliban] and I burst straight on and I went straight downstage as Miranda. Now I come on as Ariel and choose to become Miranda. That's difficult to play but it makes sense in terms of setting up the opposition between Ariel and Caliban as aspects of Prospero's psyche. We also cut my boatswain bits – we didn’t need them (although I quite liked the boatswain!) Now Mark [Prospero] plays the boatswain as part of the storm on the chessboard. Lots of little bits have been cut all over the place: we’ve lost nearly twenty minutes since the first performance. The aim is to get as close as we can to two hours. Each performance brings its own changes too; one of us might decide to say something in a slightly different way, and that influences the other characters’ reactions.

Turning Lines Out

Today we’ve been looking at lines we could turn out to include the audience. The theatre's difficult in terms of audibility – I have to project quite a lot – so Tim suggested that we might want to try playing some of the lines that are difficult to hear out to the audience as asides. Not everything of course, just certain lines. As Miranda I say:

Why speaks my father so ungently? This
Is the third man that e’er I saw, the first
That e’er I sigh’d for. Pity move my father
To be inclin’d my way!
[I.ii]

I had been addressing Prospero: ‘Why are you speaking so ungently?’ Tim asked me to try turning it out to the audience; Miranda is asking them a question ‘Why speaks my father so ungently?’ It works – that's why he's the director! Alex has started to play a lot out to the audience as Caliban as well, which is great because I think that interaction between the actors and the audience is what the Globe is about.

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

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